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LIBRARY  OF  THE  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 

PRINCETON,  N.  J. 


Presented  by 


Division .liiP  C.'T'l  O 


Section. 


ULTIMATE   IDEALS^^,,^,;^ 


BY 


JUL  *  •;  1920 

Logical  st\*#^ 


MARY  TAYLOR  BLAUVELT 

Author  of  "The  Development  of  Cabinet  Government 

in  England,"  "In  Cambridge  Backs," 

"Solitude  Letters" 


BOSTON 

SHERMAN,  FRENCH  &  COMPANY 

1917 


Copyright,  1917 
Sherjian,  French  ^  Company 


TO 

ALL  MY  PUPILS 

OLD  AND  NEW 


"  It  is  manifest  that  nothing  can  be  of  any  conse- 
quence to  mankind,  or  to  any  creature,  but  happiness." 
Bishop  Butler. 


"  Happiness  and  reality  came  through  Jesus 
Christ."  John  1:17  —  translated  by  Matthew  Ar- 
nold. 


FOREWORD 

This  little  book  is  the  outgrowth  of  thirteen 
years  of  teaching.  If  it  be  asked  why  I  have 
chosen  to  write  upon  so  trite  a  subject,  I  reply 
that  I  had  taught  Bible  many  years  before  I  had 
the  faintest  understanding  of  what  was  meant  by 
the  expressions,  the  poor  in  spirit,  the  meek,  the 
pure  in  heart,  before  I  had  any  comprehension  of 
what  it  was  to  inherit  the  earth,  or  to  see  God. 
Because  I  think  there  may  be  others  in  like  case 
with  myself,  I  venture  to  put  forth  this  little  book 
as  my  attempt  to  interpret  the  message  of  the 
Divine  Teacher  in  terms  of  the  life  of  to-day. 

Even  in  this  age  of  war,  unrighteousness  and  un- 
happiness,  it  may  not  be  amiss  to  consider  the 
ideals  of  peace,  righteousness  and  happiness,  given 
us  by  that  Prince  of  Peace,  who,  we  yet  believe, 
would  in  righteousness  make  war. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I  The  Ultimate  Ideal 1 

II  The  Poor  in  Spirit 12 

III  They   That   Mourn 34> 

IV  The   Meek 45 

V     They  That  Hunger  and  Thirst  After 

Righteousness 64 

VI     The    Merciful 80 

VII     The    Peacemakers 94 

VIII     The  Pure  in  Heart 109 


I 

THE  ULTIMATE  IDEAL 

It  is  very  difficult  in  these  days  for  a  thinking 
person  to  give  any  detailed  account  of  what  he 
believes  concerning  God.  And  yet  I  am  sure  that 
it  is  an  age  in  which  there  are  more  seekers  after 
God,  more  seekers  after  truth  than  ever  before. 
If  there  is  less  readiness  to  believe  what  is  taught 
than  there  used  to  be,  that  is  because  the  desire 
for  truth  is  stronger  than  it  used  to  be.  We 
realize  that  it  is  not  sufficient  to  love  the  Lord 
our  God  with  all  our  heart,  (the  emotional  na- 
ture), with  all  our  soul,  (the  {esthetic  nature), 
with  all  our  strength,  (the  will),  but  that  we  must 
also  love  Him  with  all  our  mind.  If  the  God  of 
our  fathers  is  to  be  our  God,  it  must  not  be 
because  we  have  accepted  Him  from  them,  but 
because  we  have  found  Him  for  ourselves. 

For  while  it  is  true  that  we  cannot  by  search- 
ing find  out  God,  cannot  find  out  the  Almighty 
unto  perfection,  it  is  also  true,  and  we  are  realiz- 
ing more  and  more  that  it  is  true,  that  the  whole 
purpose  of  our  creation  is  to  seek  after  God,  if 
haply  we  may  feel  after  Him  and  find  Him. 

And  doubtless  it  was  meant  that  this  search 
1 


2  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

after  God  should  go  on  indefinitely,  that  the  God 
of  one  generation  should  not  be  the  God  of  the 
next,  that  to  find  Him  should  be  to  lose  Him. 
For  when  the  purpose  of  life  is  accomplished, 
Avhen  there  is  nothing  more  to  look  forward  to, 
romance  ends  and  life  ends.  To  the  race  that 
has  fully  found  its  God,  further  spiritual  activ- 
ity is  impossible,  it  is  time  for  it  to  become  ex- 
tinct. 

But  while  there  can  be  no  ultimate  belief,  there 
are  certain  ideals  which  to  me,  at  my  present 
stage  of  thinking,  do  seem  to  be  ultimate.  These 
ideals,  which,  although  they  do  not  comprise  the 
whole  of  life,^  certainly  comprise  a  large  part  of 
it,  seem  to  me  best  expressed  by  Jesus  in  the 
verses  knowns  as  the  Beatitudes.  From  over 
familiarity  these  verses  have  become  trite,  but 
lately  they  have  come  to  me  with  all  the  splendor 
of  a  new  revelation.  I  see  more  and  more  that  it 
was  His  ability  to  put  such  profound  truth  into  a 
nutshell  that  made  the  Carpenter  of  Nazareth  the 
Son  of  God,  that  to  Him  far  more  than  to  Aris- 
totle belongs  the  title,  "  Master  of  those  that 
know." 

For  Jesus  did  not  think.  He  knew.  He  was 
not  the  thinker.  He  was  the  seer.  He  who  sees 
has  no  need  to  think.  But  to  me,  as  a  result  of 
long  thinking,  has  come  a  little  understanding 
of  that  which  He  knew.  And  because  when  old 
things  become  new,  they  are  surrounded  with  a 
1  Notably  the  aesthetic  ideals  are  omitted. 


THE  ULTIMATE  IDEAL  3 

glory  and  a  tenderness,  such  as  the  absolutely 
new  can  never  have,  I  have  ventured  to  write  on 
what  may  seem  to  be  a  worn  out  theme,  in  the 
hope  that  I  may  make  what  has  become  new  to 
me,  new  to  some  one  else.  But  chiefly  I  write,  as 
I  tliink  every  writer  does,  to  clarify  my  own 
thought.  For  it  is  only  after  we  have  expressed 
a  thing  clearly  that  we  really  understand  it. 

Whether  the  passage  commonly  known  as  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  was  spoken  all  at  one  time  '^ 
or  not,  it  certainly  is  the  moral,  or  rather  the 
spiritual  law  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  occupying 
the  same  place  in  the  New  Testament  Kingdom 
of  God,  as  the  law,  reputed  to  have  been  given 
from  Sinai,  occupies  in  the  Old  Testament  King- 
dom of  God.  And  if  it  was  not  spoken  all  at  one 
time,  the  author  of  the  first  Gospel  has  put  it 
together  so  artistically,  that  it  might  have  been 
so  spoken.  Regarded  as  a  single  discourse,  it 
analyzes  easily,  and  Jesus  might  almost  like  the 
modern  clergyman,  have  taken  a  text.  And  if  He 
had  done  so,  I  think  it  would  have  been  those 
words  of  His  to  the  Samaritan  woman,  "  God  is  a 
Spirit,  and  they  who  worship  Him  must  worship 
Him  in  spirit  and  in  truth." 

Indeed,  these  words  might  almost  be  said  to 
comprise  His  whole  message  to  man.  For  it  was 
the  mission  of  Jesus  to  make  a  religion,  which  had 
become  little  more  than  conventional,  spiritual.j 
"  Except  your  righteousness  exceed  the  righteous- 
ness of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees,  ye  can  in  no 


4  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

wise  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  Heaven !  "  How 
is  our  righteousness  to  exceed  the  righteousness  of 
the  scribes  and  Pharisees?  In  that  it  is  in  spirit 
and  in  truth! 

Following  out  the  idea  that  the  whole  passage 
is  the  spiritual  law  of  the  kingdom,  the  first  nine 
verses,  conmionly  known  as  the  Beatitudes,  may 
be  considered  as  describing  the  citizens  of  the 
kingdom,  their  duties  and  their  rights. 

And  who  are  the  citizens  of  the  kingdom? 
Why,  the  poor  in  spirit,  they  that  mourn,  the 
meek,  they  that  hunger  and  thirst  after  right- 
eousness, the  merciful,  the  pure  in  heart,  the 
peacemakers. 

And  what  are  their  duties  as  citizens?  Why, 
to  be  poor  in  spirit,  to  learn  the  lesson  that 
mourning  teaches,  to  hunger  and  thirst  after 
righteousness,  to  be  merciful,  to  be  pure  in  heart, 
to  be  peacemakers. 

That  is,  their  duty  consists  not  in  performing 
certain  actions,  but  in  having  a  certain  spirit. 
Actions  are  valuable,  only  as  they  tend  to  pro- 
duce, or  are  manifestations  of  this  spirit.  For  the 
outward  form  that  the  worship  of  Him  who  is 
Spirit  takes,  does  not  much  matter;  the  only  im- 
portant thing  is  that  it  should  be  in  spirit  and 
in  truth. 

And  what  are  the  rights  of  the  citizens  of  the 
kingdom?  They  may  all  be  summed  up  in  one, 
blessedness,  happiness.  Happy  are  the  poor  in 
spirit,  happy  are  they  that  mourn,  happy  are  the 


THE  ULTIMATE  IDEAL  6 

meek,  happy  are  they  that  hunger  and  thirst 
after  righteousness,  happy  are  the  pure  in  heart, 
happy  are  the  merciful,  happy  are  the  peace- 
makers. 

And  the  end  of  each  Beatitude  gives  us  an  idea 
of  what  Jesus'  conception  of  happiness  was. 
Happiness  is  to  possess  the  kingdom  of  Heaven, 
to  be  comforted,  to  inherit  the  earth,  to  be  filled 
with  righteousness,  to  see  God,  to  be  called  the 
children  of  God.  It  is  not  what  happens  to  us, 
but  what  happens  in  us,  that  makes  us  happy. 
Happiness,  like  the  kingdom  of  Heaven,  is  within 
us.  Happiness  is  the  kingdom  of  Heaven,  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  Happiness. 

For  the  end  of  the  kingdom,  its  purpose  and  its 
only  purpose,  is  happiness.  Jesus  knew  that  it 
is  not  only  the  right,  but  the  duty  of  every  man 
to  pursue  happiness.  He  came  to  teach  us  how 
to  pursue  it.  There  is  only  one  ultimate  ideal, 
and  that  is  happiness.  Not  even  righteousness, 
but  happiness.  Righteousness  is  the  path,  but 
happiness  is  the  goal.  For  our  goal,  the  place  to 
which  we  journey,  is  His  presence;  and  in  that 
presence  is  fullness  of  joy,  at  His  right  hand  is 
happiness  forevermore. 

For  we  were  created  for  joy,  not  for  sorrow; 
if  weeping  endures  for  a  night,  it  is  only  that  joy 
may  come  in  the  morning.  Only  in  joy  can  the 
soul  fulfil  itself,  fulfil  the  Creator's  thought  of  it, 
be  worthy  of  the  Creator  and  of  creation. 

In  the  moments  in  which  we  realize  our  citizen- 


6  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

ship,  we  recognize  this.  For  then  we  know  what 
happiness  is,  and  we  understand  that  it  does  not 
spring  from  outward  things,  but  from  such  a 
conception  of  life,  as  leads  to  a  gladsome  enlight- 
ened acceptance  of  whatever  our  particular  lives 
may  bring,  a  serene  energy  in  which  we  rejoice 
both  to  do  and  to  be.  In  such  moments  we  cry, 
"  Thy  will  be  done,"  not  in  gloomy  submission, 
but  in  rapturous  adoration,  for  we  have  at  least 
had  a  glimpse  of  what  that  good  and  perfect  will 
of  God  is.  Sacrifice  is  no  longer  for  us  a  means 
of  sanctification,  for  we  are  already  sanctified, 
have  already  entered  into  the  inheritance  of  them 
that  are  sanctified.  Therefore,  for  us,  there  is  no 
more  sacrifice.  We  know  that  wo  can  only  re- 
nounce joy  for  the  sake  of  some  higher  joy,  and 
that  is  joy  beyond  joy. 

So  when  we  fast,  we  no  longer  have  to  be  told 
not  to  be  as  the  hypocrites  are,  of  a  sad  counte- 
nance ;  instinctively  we  anoint  our  heads,  and 
>vash  our  faces,  that  our  outer  selves  may  corre- 
spond to  our  inner  selves,  may  radiate  the  joy 
that  has  taken  possesion  of,  and  fills  our  inmost 
souls.  Our  Father  who  seeth  in  secret  has  al- 
ready rewarded  us.  He  has  given  us  of  His  joy, 
has  made  us  one  with  Himself.  And  He  has  re- 
warded us  openly,  for  this  joy  shines  out  upon  all 
with  whom  we  come  into  contact,  until  they  too 
become  sharers  in  it. 

For  men  help  each  other  by  their  joy,  not  by 
their  sorrow.     Hence  it  is  that  the  first  duty  of 


THE  ULTIMATE  IDEAL  7 

the  soul  is  to  be  as  happy  as  possible,  for  thus 
only  can  it  be  complete,  thus  only  can  it  enter 
into  its  inheritance,  the  kingdom  of  Heaven. 
Thus  only  can  it  come  under  the  ultimate  angel's 
law,  where 

"  Law,  Life,  Joy,  Impulse,  are  one  thing !  " 

"  I  am  come  that  they  might  have  life,  and 
that  they  might  have  it  more  abundantly !  "  And 
of  what  does  life  consist  save  of  constant  rejoic- 
ing of  soul,  that  rapture  from  which  springs  life, 
and  ever  more  life?  For  that  wonderful  trinity, 
love,  joy  and  life,  which  are  not  three  but  one, 
can  continue  to  exist  only  as  they  find  expression, 
and  they  find  expression  only  in  creation.  Joy 
and  only  joy  is  creative,  for  while  it  is  true  that 
great  suffering  generally  precedes  creation  (trav- 
ail always  means  pain),  not  until  sorrow  has  been 
tutned  into  joy,  does  it  become  creative.  Or 
rather  the  creative  process  always  turns  sorrow 
into  joy,  without  joy  has  nothing  ever  been  cre- 
ated. 

The  prophets  of  India  knew  that  when  they 
wrote,  "  From  joy  does  spring  all  this  creation, 
by  joy  is  it  maintained,  toward  joy  does  it  pro- 
gress, and  into  joy  does  it  enter."  And  again, 
"  Creation  is  the  form  that  His  joy  doth  take." 
And  the  prophets  of  Israel  knew  it  when  they 
sang,  "  Be  glad  in  the  Lord,  and  rejoice  oh,  ye 
righteous;  shout  for  joy  all  ye  that  are  upright 
in  heart,"  "  Oh,  Eternal,  happy  is  the  man  that 


8  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

putteth  His  trust  in  Thee,"  for  "  All  Thy  ways 
are  pleasantness  and  all  Thy  paths  are  peace !  " 

But  in  Jesus'  day,  as  Matthew  Arnold  points 
out,  Israel  had  somehow  lost  the  peace,  the  joy 
of  which  her  prophets  had  written  so  much ;  there- 
fore it  was  the  mission  of  Him  whom  we  call  the 
INIan  of  Sorrows,  and  acquainted  with  grief,  to 
restore  it  unto  them.  "  These  things  have  I 
spoken  unto  you,  that  my  joy  may  be  in  you,  and 
that  your  joy  may  be  full." 

But  why  had  Israel  lost  her  joy,  why  had  her 
teachers  become  whited  scpulchers,  mere  recepta- 
cles for  dead  men's  bones?  Because  their  right- 
eousness had  ceased  to  be  creative,  and  had  be- 
come formal  and  traditional.  Because  they  them- 
selves had  ceased  to  be  real !  Jesus  came  to  do 
away  with  formalism,  to  make  men  real,  for  thus 
only  could  they  be  happy !  Happiness  and  real- 
ity came  through  Jesus  Christ. 

"  Sir,"  said  the  Samaritan  woman,  "  I  perceive 
that  thou  art  a  prophet,"  and  then  she  began  to 
ask  him  the  most  important  question  that  she 
could  think  of  to  ask  a  prophet,  "  Our  fathers 
worshipped  in  this  mountain,  and  ye  say  that  in 
Jerusalem  is  the  place  where  men  ought  to  wor- 
ship !  "  It  is  as  though  we  to-da^^,  brought  face 
to  face  with  a  prophet  of  God,  could  think  of 
nothing  more  important  to  ask  about  than  the 
cut  of  a  surplice ! 

True,  this  was  an  ignorant  woman,  and  a 
Samaritan,     but    in     spiritual     conceptions     the 


THE  ULTIMATE  IDEAL  9 

scribes  and  the  Pharisees  had  not  advanced  much 
beyond  her;  their  spiritual  life,  too,  consisted 
mainly  of  outward  observances.  And  no  outward 
observances,  even  of  things  which  God  had  really 
commanded,  or  which  the  experience  of  the  ages 
had  taught  were  God's  laws,  could  bring  peace 
and  joy ;  much  less  such  fantastic  devices  as  they 
had  invented  for  themselves.  The  heart  was 
wrong.  "  The  things  which  come  from  within  a 
man's  heart,  they  it  is  which  defile  the  man."  The 
keeping  of  the  commandments,  the  keeping  of  a 
man's  whole  soul,  through  which  he  enters  into 
life,  could  not  consist  in  outward  observances ! 
God  is  a  Spirit,  and  we  come  into  His  presence, 
the  presence  in  which  is  always  fullness  of  joy, 
only  as  we  worship  Him  in  spirit  and  in  truth ! 

For  thus  only  can  we  be  real,  thus  only  can  we 
fulfil  ourselves,  thus  only  can  we  enter  into  the 
joy  of  our  Lord!  For  Jesus'  joy  consisted  in  the 
fact  that  He  was  real,  that  in  Him  was  no  sham 
whatsoever.  He  was  Himself,  He  fulfilled  Him- 
self. Outwardly  and  inwardly  He  was  Himself, 
He  was  what  God  meant  Him  to  be.  His  peace. 
His  joy,  consisted  in  the  fact  that  He  had  at- 
tained the  hardest  thing  of  all  to  obtain,  perfect 
truth,  perfect  sincerity,  perfect  self-knowledge, 
perfect  self-fulfilment.  He  was  real ;  happiness 
and  reality  came  through  Jesus  Christ. 

But  we  are  not  happy,  because  we  are  not  real, 
because  we  are  not  ourselves !  From  babyhood 
there  has  been  so  much  formalism,  so  much  con- 


10  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

vcntionality  in  our  words,  in  our  actions,  in  what 
we  have  been  pleased  to  call  our  thoughts,  that 
M'c  have  lost  ourselves,  and  cannot  find  ourselves. 
Indeed  if  we  should  meet  our  true  selves,  we  would 
perhaps  hardly  know  them. 

"  For  we  have  been  on  many  thousand  lines, 
And  we  have  shown,  on  each,  spirit  and  power; 
But  hardly  have  we,  for  one  little  hour. 
Been  on  our  own  lines,  have  we  been  ourselves." 

But  if  we  would  be  happy,  if  we  would  have 
the  joy  of  Jesus  fulfilled  in  ourselves,  we  must 
know  ourselves  and  be  ourselves,  we  must  come 
to  ourselves,  we  must  be  our  real  selves,  as  He  was 
His  real  self.  We  must  die  to  our  apparent 
selves,  we  must  live  to  our  real  selves. 

And  the  inner  and  the  outer  self  must  be  per- 
fectly harmonious ;  the  outer  self  must  be  a  per- 
fect expression  of  the  inner  self,  and  the  inner 
self  must  be  worthy  of  perfect  expression,  thus 
only  can  we  be  at  peace  with  ourselves. 

For  we  should  never  be  satisfied  with  ourselves 
until  we  do  what  is  right,  not  because  it  is  our 
duty,  but  because  we  want  to  do  it,  because  we 
enjoy  doing  it.  So  long  as  we  act  from  a  sense 
of  duty,  so  long  as  sacrifice  is  conscious,  the  joy 
that  springs  from  right  action  is  partly  self- 
conceit,  and  therefore  vicious.  But  to  him  whose 
heart  is  right,  all  sense  of  duty  vanishes,  for  him 
duty  has  ceased  to  exist,  he  simply  enjoys  himself, 
his  joy  is  full^  he  is  made  perfect  in  joy.     For 


THE  ULTIMATE  IDEAL  11 

what  is  happiness  save  perfect  expression  of  a  self 
worth  expressing?  The  man  who  has  attained 
to  this  is  at  one  with  himself,  the  higher  self  hav- 
ing completely  triumphed  over  the  lower,  at  one 
with  the  Father,  whose  ideal  for  him,  he  has  ful- 
filled. 

This  is  the  ultimate  ideal,  all  other  ideals  are 
but  the  path  that  leads  to  it.  It  may  be  that 
we  shall  never  wholly  reach  it.  As  Schlegel  says 
of  Plato's  Republic,  it  is  an  archetype  laid  up  in 
Heaven  for  the  instruction  of  the  philosopher,  but 
it  is  at  least  to  be  "  asymptotically  approached." 
That  is,  as  the  curve  constantly  approaches  its 
asymptote,  although  it  never  reaches  it  until  it 
gets  out  of  space  into  infinity,  so  we  should  ap- 
proach our  asymptote,  reality  and  the  happiness 
that  comes  with  it,  although  we  may  never  reach 
it  until  we  get  out  of  Time  into  Eternity. 


II 

THE  POOR  IN  SPIRIT 

Nothing  is  more  curious  than  the  way  in  which 
we  repeat  certain  phrases  from  earliest  childhood, 
without  the  faintest  understanding  of  them,  and 
furthermore  without  the  faintest  suspicion  that 
we  do  not  understand.  Such  was  my  experience 
with  the  expression  "  the  poor  in  spirit."  I  did 
not  know  what  it  meant,  nor  had  I  the  slightest 
idea  that  I  did  not  know,  until  in  my  senior  year 
in  college,  a  professor  of  philosophy  startled  me 
by  asking  me  to  define  it.  For  the  first  time 
I  realized  that  this  was  something  that  I  had 
never  thought  about,  and,  furthermore,  that 
it  was  something  that  it  would  be  well  to  think 
about. 

On  the  spur  of  the  moment,  I  decided  that  the 
words  were  a  curious  roundabout  way  of  saying 
"  the  humble  " ;  that  just  as  the  poor  in  material 
things  are  those  who  feel  their  need  of  material 
things,  and  desire  them  intensely,  so  the  poor  in 
spirit  are  those  who  feel  their  need  of  spiritual 
things,  and  desire  them  intensely.  This  made  the 
blessing  promised,  the  kingdom  of  Heaven,  not 
only    very    appropriate,    but    even    a    matter    of 

12 


THE  POOR  IN  SPIRIT  13 

course.  For  it  is  impossible  to  desire  spiritual 
blessings  intensely,  and  not  obtain  them;  if  we 
really  want  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  above  all 
things  else,  we  shall  certainly  have  it.  "  If  with 
all  your  hearts  ye  seek  Me,  ye  shall  surely  find 
Me." 

But  this  makes  the  first  beautitude  diff^er  little 
in  meaning  from  the  fourth,  "  Blessed  are  they 
that  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness,  for 
they  shall  be  filled."  I  remember,  too,  that  St. 
Luke  represents  Jesus  as  saying,  "  Blessed  are  the 
poor."  Does  not  St.  Matthew  give  us  simply 
another  and  more  complete  version  of  this,  a 
more  understanding  version?  Should  not  this 
beatitude  be  interpreted  "  Blessed  are  they  who, 
whether  they  possess  or  do  not  possess  worldly 
wealth,  are  at  least  in  spirit  poor;  they  who,  if 
riches  increase,  set  not  their  hearts  upon  them; 
they  who,  if  riches  decrease,  set  not  their  hearts 
upon  them.  For  their  object  is  to  lay  up  treas- 
ure not  on  earth,  but  in  Heaven.  And  so  their 
reward  is  that  upon  which  they  have  set  their 
hearts,  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  For  what  is  the 
kingdom  of  Heaven?  "The  kingdom  of  Heaven 
is  not  meat  and  drink,"  not  the  meat  and  drink, 
upon  which  they  have  not  set  their  hearts,  "  but 
righteousness,  peace,  joy  in  the  Holy  Spirit,"  the 
things  upon  which  they  have  set  their  hearts. 
The  kingdom  of  Heaven  is  within  us,  and  that  is 
the  reason  that  they  who  have  set  their  hearts 
upon  outward  things  are  not  able  to  find  it. 


14  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

Some  time  ago  I  heard  a  man  condemn  this  as 
a  soft  and  sentimental  age,  an  age  that  was  too 
lenient  to  the  sinner,  and  had  too  little  considera- 
tion for  the  respectable  member  of  society.  I 
could  not  help  thinking  that  if  this  were  indeed 
true,  it  might  mean  that  we  are  beginning  to  un- 
derstand the  mind  of  Christ,  to  have  that  mind 
witliin  us  which  was  also  in  Him.  For  Jesus  seems 
to  have  had  nothing  but  compassion  for  the  obvi- 
ous sins,  that  bring  their  own  punishment  with 
them,  the  outcast  was  alwa^'s  His  friend.  Was  it 
not  that  He  felt  that  such  sins  had  their  place 
in  the  Divine  plan  for  human  development.''  For 
upon  the  one  hand,  they  teach  men  their  insuffi- 
ciency and  weakness,  and  thus  throw  them  back 
upon  God,  while  on  the  other  hand,  they  teach 
them  to  make  allowance  for  their  neighbor,  to 
forgive  and  to  love. 

For  what  is  human  development,  human  per- 
fection, save  getting  closer  to  God,  getting  closer 
to  man,  understanding  God  better,  understanding 
man  better,  lo^^ng  God  better,  loving  man  better.'' 
For  such  development  it  may  be  that  such  sin  is 
necessary ;  it  is  possible  that  we  can  no  more  be 
made  perfect  without  sin,  than  we  can  be  made 
perfect  without  suffering.  Is  it  because  of  this 
that  there  is  more  joy  in  the  presence  of  the  an- 
gels of  God  over  one  sinner  that  repenteth,  than 
over  ninety  and  nine  just  persons  that  need  no  re- 
pentance.'' It  is  gentleness  that  makes  us  great, 
and  after  all  does  not  gentleness  imply  a  certain 


THE  POOR  IN  SPIRIT  15 

weakness,  at  least  sufficient  weakness  to  under- 
stand the  weak? 

On  the  other  hand,  the  vices  of  the  mind,  the 
respectable  sins,  avarice  and  hypocrisy,  which  in 
this  life  ordinarily  bring  not  punishment  but  pros- 
perity, are  as  much  worse  than  the  vices  of  the 
body  as  the  mind  is  above  the  body,  for  they  are 
the  sins  which  in  their  very  nature  tend  to  sepa- 
rate us  from  God  and  man.  Ye  cannot  serve  God 
and  mammon,  ye  cannot  love  God  and  mammon, 
ye  cannot  serve  man  and  mammon,  ye  cannot  love 
man  and  mammon. 

For  the  excessive  love  of  money  not  only  ex- 
tinguishes all  divine  ideals  within  a  man,  it  also 
dulls  all  human  interests.  To  the  mere  money- 
maker, men  become  nothing  but  raw  material,  out 
of  which  he  can  make  more  money.  And  when  he 
has  made  his  money,  he  frequently  does  not  know 
how  to  use  it  so  as  to  enrich  even  his  own  nature, 
or  give  charm  to  his  life.  His  pleasures,  if  he 
has  any  apart  from  money-making,  are  often 
costly  but  not  ennobling,  his  home  expensive  but 
not  refined,  while  his  family  are  often  averse  to 
effort,  living  only  for  excitement,  and  helpless 
without  it.  If  he  is  hospitable,  his  hospitality 
often  springs  more  from  love  of  ostentation,  than 
from  love  of  his  friend,  and  enriches  neither  him 
that  gives  nor  him  that  takes.  There  is  no  po- 
etry in  his  life,  for  poetry  is  in  its  essence  the 
discerning  of  beauty.  And  there  is  no  room  in 
the    heart    of    the    mere    money    maker    for    the 


16  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

strange  jiiul  wistful  longing  which  beautiful  things 
arouse,  for  the  raj)turous  emotion  evoked  by 
lK>auty. 

To  such  a  man  there  are  no  moods  of  soul- 
delight,  for  there  is  no  soul  to  be  delighted.  For 
what  is  the  soul  save  the  power  to  see  the  beauty 
in  things,  the  power  to  see  it  where  it  is  obvious, 
and  the  power  to  see  it  where  it  is  not  always 
obvious,  in  all  the  lives  al>out  us?  "What  shall 
it  profit  a  man  if  he  gain  the  whole  world  and  lose 
his  own  soul?  "  In  the  multitude  of  his  posses- 
sions, he  has  lost  the  power  to  become  a  son  of 
God. 

Even  if  he  be  the  possessor  of  beautiful  things, 
it  is  often  not  the  sense  of  their  beauty  that 
thrills  him,  but  the  fact  of  his  possession.  He 
may  enjoy  his  own  Ix^autiful  gardens,  but  not 
those  of  his  neighbors,  still  less  the  public  parks, 
or  the  wild  beauty  of  Nature.  For  a  thing  must 
be  his  exclusively,  before  he  can  enjoy  it,  and 
thus  his  possessions  form  a  high  wall  about  him, 
cutting  him  off  not  only  from  his  fellows,  but 
from  all  other  beautiful  things.  Thus  in  order 
that  he  may  possess  a  few  things,  he  has  given  up 
everything.  He  lives,  or  rather  is  buried  alive, 
in  the  little  world  of  his  own  possessions,  while 
the  poor  in  spirit  may  claim  the  whole  world  that 
God  has  made  as  his  own.  Nay,  he  may  live  not 
only  in  this  world,  but  in  a  thousand  worlds,  for 
all  things  are  his,  not  only  the  things  that  he  pos- 
sesses,  but    also   the  things   that   he  enjoys,   not 


THE  POOR  IN  SPIRIT  17 

only  the  things  that  he  experiences,  but  even  the 
things  that  he  imagines. 

I  was  once  present  at  a  party,  which  a  friend 
of  mine  gave  to  some  pauper  blind  children.  One 
little  lad,  greatly  excited,  wanted  to  feel  of  every- 
thing in  the  room,  and  to  know  to  whom  each 
belonged.     When    in    answer   to    his    questions    I 

said,  "  It  belongs  to  Mrs.  W ,  everything  here 

belongs  to  Mrs.  W ,"  he  put  his  hand  on  my 

cheek,  and  with  a  beatific  smile  exclaimed,  "  Oh, 
no !  you  made  a  mistake !  it  is  all  mine  for  today !  " 
That  is  the  way  it  is  with  the  poor  in  spirit: 
everything  that  he  can  enjoy  is  his  for  today,  and 
which  is  ours  for  today  is  ours  forever. 

"  What  entered  into  thee, 
That  was,  is,  and  shall  be !  " 

"  How  hardly  shall  they  that  trust  in  riches 
enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God !  "  For  the  king- 
dom of  God  is  the  kingdom  of  love,  the  kingdom 
of  understanding,  the  kingdom  of  the  ideal,  the 
kingdom  of  the  beautiful !  And  into  that  king- 
dom none  but  the  poor  in  spirit  may  enter. 

But  we  must  remember  that  it  is  the  poor  in 
spirit  that  are  blessed,  and  these  are  not  neces- 
sarily the  poor  in  this  world's  goods.  There  is 
no  blessing  in  either  riches  or  poverty,  considered 
by  themselves,  nor  is  there  necessarily  any  curse 
in  either.  There  are  times  when  having  seen  the 
vulgar  materialism,  the  disgusting  animalism,  of 


18  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

certain  rich  people,  we  have  a  tendency  to  idealize 
the  poor.  But  a  closer  view  shows  us  that  there 
is  often  quite  as  much  materialism  in  the  life  of 
the  poor,  as  in  that  of  the  rich.  Poverty,  like 
sorrow,  is  frequently  a  blessing,  because  it  brings 
men  nearer  to  each  other,  helps  them  to  recog- 
nize each  other's  human  hearts.  Poverty,  too, 
sometimes  demands  and  cries  out  for  faith  in  God. 
Those  in  comfortable  circumstances  were  not 
eager  to  come  to  the  marriage  of  the  king's  son ; 
they  had  too  many  interests  of  their  own.  The 
blind,  the  poor,  the  halt  and  the  maimed,  having 
no  such  interests,  were  glad  to  come.  In  Tol- 
stoi's "  War  and  Peace,"  it  was  not  until  Peter, 
the  richest  man  in  Russia,  had  been  taken  prisoner 
and  deprived  of  everything,  that  he  could  look 
upon  the  woods  and  the  fields,  and  beyond  to  the 
limitless  horizon,  and  exclaim,  "  All  that  is  mine ! 
All  that  is  in  me !  and  that  is  what  they  think  they 
have  taken  prisoner !  " 

Yet  it  is  doubtful  whether  Peter  would  have  felt 
this,  if  he  had  always  been  poor.  We  know  that, 
for  the  very  poor,  life  is  often  reduced  to,  "  What 
shall  we  eat,  and  what  shall  we  drink,  and  where- 
withal shall  we  be  clothed?  "  and  that  this  strug- 
gle, so  far  from  throwing  the  soul  back  upon  God 
and  the  neighbor,  frequently  leaves  no  room  in 
the  life  for  either  God  or  the  neighbor,  no  power 
to  appreciate  the  beauty  of  either  earth,  or  sea 
or  sky.  Is  it  not  the  ultimate  tragedy  of  the 
slums,     that,    under    slum    conditions,    one    can 


THE  POOR  IN  SPIRIT  19 

scarcely,  from  birth  to  death,  think  of  anything 
but  the  body?  Existence  becomes  merely  animal, 
men  work  in  order  to  get  food  to  keep  the  body 
alive,  in  order  to  do  more  work,  to  get  more  food, 
to  keep  the  body  alive,  and  so  on  in  an  endless 
chain. 

Nor,  and  perhaps  this  is  the  greatest  curse  of 
all,  is  there  any  pleasure  in  the  work,  for  it  is  of 
too  monotonous  a  nature ;  it  affords  no  oppor- 
tunity for  either  self-expression  or  self-develop- 
ment. Consequently  there  is  no  self  to  be  ex- 
pressed, no  self  to  be  developed;  man  ceases  to  be 
man,  and  becomes  a  mere  animal.  The  only 
pleasures  that  can  be  enjoyed  are  physical  pleas- 
ures, and  of  the  physical  pleasures  those  that  are 
most  degrading  are  often  most  enjoyed.  Some 
time  ago  I  saw  a  letter  from  an  educated  man  who 
had  gone  to  work  as  a  common  laborer,  in  order 
that  he  might  study  the  conditions,  under  wliich 
so  many  of  his  fellows  had  to  live.  He  boarded 
in  a  house  with  other  laborers,  and  he  testified 
that  ninety  per  cent  of  his  house-mates  got  drunk 
once  a  week,  and  that  as  they  sat  at  table  it  was 
unusual  for  five  minutes  to  pass  without  an  ob- 
scene jest. 

And  then  there  is  a  certain  grace,  finish,  polish 
and  pervasive  charm,  which  people  cannot  easily 
acquire,  except  by  a  certain  amount  of  leisure 
from  drudgery  and  scrambling  cares.  We  may 
say  that  this  is  not  essential,  and  perhaps  does 
not  even   matter  very   much,  but  in   our  inmost 


20  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

hearts  we  know  that  it  does  matter;  that  it  is 
this  beauty  of  perception  and  proportion  that 
attracts  us,  as  nothing  else  does.  The  other  day 
I  read  a  story,  in  which  the  wife  of  the  principal 
character  experiences  the  shock  of  discovering 
that  her  husband  had  made  money  by  questionable 
means.  When  she  reproaches  him  with  it,  he  re- 
plies, "  You  know  very  well  that  you  would  not 
have  looked  at  me  if  I  had  always  been  poor.  I 
grant  that  you  can  get  along  without  the  things 
that  money  buys,  but  you  wanted  the  kind  of  man 
that  it  takes  a  certain  amount  of  money  to  make." 

Yes,  it  may  be  a  sad  truth,  but  it  is  a  truth. 
Most  of  us,  if  we  are  high-minded,  can  get  along 
without  the  things  that  money  buys,  but  we  de- 
mand as  our  friends  the  kind  of  men  and  women 
that  it  usually  takes  a  certain  amount  of  money 
to  make.  Of  course  we  have  all  known  simple 
country  people  who,  by  their  natural  kindliness 
and  sympathy  on  the  one  hand,  and  acute  ob- 
servation on  the  other,  have  won  their  way  to 
our  hearts.  We  have  felt  that  this  natural  essen- 
tial culture  was  much  better  than  any  acquired 
culture.  But  the  one  does  not  necessarily  exclude 
the  other,  and  there  is  no  denying  the  fact  that 
the  acquired  culture  greatly  enhances  the  value 
of  the  natural  culture,  that  the  educated  man, 
who  works  out  far-reaching  problems,  is  of  more 
worth  to  the  world,  than  the  mere  hewer  of  wood 
and  drawer  of  water. 

Moreover  it  is  just  the  temperament  that,  under 


THE  POOR  IN  SPIRIT  21 

favorable  circumstances,  might  have  been  artistic 
and  contributed  something  of  permanent  beauty 
to  the  world,  that  is  most  likely  to  break  down 
under  monotonous  toil  in  an  uncongenial  environ- 
ment. It  is  a  mistake  to  comfort  ourselves  with 
the  thought  that  real  genius  will  always  conquer 
circumstances ;  it  will  not.  No  doubt  there  have 
been  many  mute,  inglorious  Miltons.  Many  a 
struggling  genius  has  prayed  Sidney  Lanier's 
prayer,  "  Only  bread,  dear  Lord,  not  my  Avill,  but 
Thy  decree,  and  then  leisure  to  write  my  poems," 
and  the  prayer  has  not  been  answered,  the  world 
has  been  deprived  of  the  poems. 

I  know  of  no  sadder  passage  in  all  literature 
than  one  to  be  found  in  Zangwill's  story,  "  The 
Master."  The  hero,  the  son  of  a  poor,  ignorant 
family,  has  become  a  world-renowned  painter,  and 
has  fallen  in  love  with  a  beautiful  woman,  made 
more  beautiful  by  all  that  money  can  buy.  And 
then  "  the  thought  of  his  mother  came  up  from 
dim  recesses  of  memory,  and  he  was  jealous  of 
Eleanor  for  her  sake,  jealous  of  her  beauty,  her 
breeding,  her  wealth;  jealous  of  all  that  made  her 
different  from  his  mother,  of  all  that  made  her 
life  fuller,  freer,  higher,  richer, —  of  all,  in  fine, 
that  made  him  love  her."  For  it  had  suddenly 
dawned  upon  him  that,  after  all,  his  wretched 
mother  had  the  same  temperament  that  Eleanor 
had,  only  circumstances  had  brought  out  all  that 
was  lovely  in  Eleanor,  all  that  was  unlovely  in 
his  mother. 


22  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

And  then  in  these  days  most  men  and  women 
have  to  depend,  not  only  upon  their  own  labor 
for  their  daily  bread,  but  upon  another  man's 
will  for  a  chance  to  labor,  and  doubtless  this  often 
means  great  curtailment  of  freedom  of  thought 
and  speech,  and  of  the  development  that  comes 
with  such  freedom.  "  The  only  time  a  fellow  like 
me  can  have  an  opinion,"  a  laboring  man  was 
heard  to  remark,  "  is  when  he  is  in  bed."  The 
other  day  I  heard  of  the  principal  of  a  school  of 
whom  it  was  said,  "  She  would  have  had  the  high- 
est possible  ideals  if  only  she  had  had  a  proper 
financial  backing."  It  is  to  be  feared  that  there 
are  many  people  similarly  placed. 

When  we  consider  all  these  things,  we  come  to 
see,  that  so  far  from  exalting  poverty,  it  is  right 
that  the  great  end  of  civilization  for  this  genera- 
tion should  be,  as  it  is  coming  more  and  more  to 
be,  to  abolish  poverty,  to  do  away  not  only  with 
debasing  and  degrading  conditions,  but  also  to 
set  men  free  from  hopeless  drudgery,  to  provide 
a  certain  amount  of  leisure  and  beauty  for  all, 
together  with  the  training  that  is  necessary  for 
a  proper  appreciation  of  leisure  and  beauty.  It 
is  right  that  he  who  will  not  labor  should  not 
eat,  but  it  is  a  disgrace  to  our  civilization  that 
he  who  is  willing  to  labor  should  not  have  the 
chance  to  do  so,  and  that  he  who  does  labor  should 
often  have  the  chance  to  eat  so  little.  Such  a 
man  is  entitled  not  only  to  corn  and  house  room, 
but   to   what   Emerson   calls   Athenian   corn,   and 


THE  POOR  IN  SPIRIT  23 

Roman  house  room,  and  we  who  do  have  these 
things  should  never  be  quite  happy  in  our  posses- 
sion of  them,  until  all  can  share  them  with  us. 

But  if  neither  wealth  nor  poverty  in  itself 
brings  salvation,  neither  is  there  any  salvation 
in  middle-classness.  I  used  to  think  the  prayer  of 
Agur,  "  Give  me  neither  poverty  nor  riches,"  quite 
ideal,  and  for  myself  it  is  still  what  I  want.  But 
as  a  matter  of  fact  when  one  lives  in  a  community 
composed  entirely  of  middle-class  people,  one  finds 
their  lives  no  more  ideal  than  those  of  the  very 
poor,  or  those  of  the  very  rich.  I  will  grant  that, 
as  a  class,  there  is  probably  a  higher  average  of 
respectability  among  them,  than  is  to  be  found 
among  either  the  rich  or  the  poor.  They  have 
less  tendency  to  physical  vice,  but  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that,  except  as  the  middle  class  includes 
professional  people,  there  is  less  aspiration,  less 
lifting  up  of  the  heart  among  them,  than  there  is 
among  either  rich  or  poor. 

For  the  God  of  the  middle-class  is  too  often 
respectability,  and  having  attained  that,  there  is 
no  more  to  be  desired.  They  have  fewer  vices 
than  either  the  rich  or  the  poor,  but  on  the  other 
hand,  there  is  frequently  a  smugness  and  self-satis- 
faction among  them,  due  to  the  fact  that  their 
virtue  is  chiefly  negative.  And  with  this  smugness 
there  is  often  associated  a  certain  pretentiousness 
and  artificiality.  It  seems  as  though  they  had 
lost  the  naturalness  and  simplicity  of  the  lower 
classes,  without  gaining  the  naturalness  and  sim- 


24.  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

plicity  of  the  upper  classes.  Since  such  people 
have  so  little  in  the  way  of  positive  virtue,  it 
would  be  almost  a  relief  to  find  more  positive  vice 
among  them.  "  I  would  that  thou  wert  cold  or 
hot."  One  is  never  enthusiastic  about  them,  never 
animated  with  a  desire  to  be  like  them,  for  they 
are  not  themselves  enthusiastic,  and  their  virtue, 
Avhile  it  may  be  orderly,  is  not  beautiful,  and  their 
culture,  like  their  goodness,  is  secondhand  and 
conventional,  and  therefore  uninspiring. 

The  difficulty  with  them  is  that  they  lack  ambi- 
tion; instead  of  struggling  after  more  victory, 
they  are  content  to  sit  down  and  enjoy  the  petty 
victories  of  the  past.  They  are  not  "  pressing 
forward  to  the  things  that  are  before,"  for  they 
seem  to  interpret  St.  Paul's  words  "  I  have  learned 
in  whatsoever  state  I  am  therewith  to  be  con- 
tent," as  applying  not  only  to  the  material  state, 
but  also  to  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  state. 
And  they  are  content  with  their  present  stage  not 
only  as  a  stage,  but  as  an  end,  and  to  be  content 
Avith  anything  as  an  end  is  death.  They  are  what 
a  friend  of  mine  called  "  too  damned  happy." 
And  the  adjective  was  perfectly  correct,  for  he 
who  is  absolutely  content  with  himself  and  his 
surroundings  is  damned,  damned  or  condemned 
not  to  grow. 

For  human  nature  inspires  only  as  it  aspires, 
turning  its  back  upon  every  success  attained,  to 
pursue  another  higher  and  better  still.  When  the 
crown  falls  upon  one  victory,  it  should  only  en- 


THE  POOR  IN  SPIRIT  25 

couz'age  us  for  the  harder  tug  still  to  come.  We 
gain  one  height,  only  that  we  may  obtain  a  better 
view  of  the  height  that  lies  above  it,  and  of  the 
path  by  which  we  may  ascend  to  it. 

After  all,  does  not  the  very  expression  "  a  dead 
level  "  imply  that  any  level  is  deadening?  Vari- 
ety is  the  spice  of  life,  and  I  believe  that  for  life 
to  be  sufficiently  interesting  we  need  this  variety, 
not  only  in  temperament,  character  and  abilities, 
but  also  in  material  possessions.  Even  in  Wil- 
liam Morris'  ideal  commonwealth,  where  every- 
body could  have  everything  that  he  wanted,  some 
people  lived  in  big  houses,  and  some  people  lived 
in  little  houses,  because  they  preferred  them.  I 
prefer  the  little  house  for  myself  because  it  best 
expresses  me,  but  I  enjoy  visiting  in  the  big  houses 
of  some  of  my  friends.  And  within  certain  limits 
the  stately  homes  of  England  and  America  have 
their  place,^  are  a  real  addition  to  the  spiritual 
life  of  the  nation,  especially  when,  as  is  more  and 
more  becoming  the  case,  they  are  more  or  less 
open  to  the  public.  There  is  room  for  the  beauty 
of  Nature  which  is,  or  should  be,  free  to  all,  but 
there  is  also  room  for  the  beauty  of  Art,  which 
is  sometimes  very  expensive. 

1  Of  course  I  do  not  mean  in  any  sense  to  indorse  what 
Ruskin  describes  as  "  that  curious  laying  out  of  ground, 
that  beautiful  arrangement  of  dwelling-house  for  man  and 
beast,  by  which  we  have  grouse  and  blackcock,  so  many 
brace  to  the  acre,  and  men  and  women  —  so  many  brace 
to  the  garret." 


26  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

Wliat  then  should  be  our  attitude  toward 
wealth?  The  incdijeval  saints  seem  to  have  taken 
the  same  position  toward  material  possessions, 
that  they  took  toward  the  human  body ;  they 
regarded  both  as  impure  and  unholy  things,  and 
thought  it  the  duty  of  the  Christian  to  despise 
them.  Rut  the  body  is  not  an  impure  and  unholy 
thing,  it  is  the  temple  of  the  living  God,  and 
neither  is  wealth  in  itself  an  unholy  thing.  It  is 
true  that  temptations  come  to  us  from  the  world 
and  from  the  flesh  as  well  as  from  the  devil,  but 
the  world  and  the  flesh  are  not  in  themselves  the 
devil,  and  to  think  of  them  as  such  is  simply  to 
blaspheme  against  the  God  who  made  them,  as 
the  highest  manifestation  of  Himself. 

No,  a  man's  life  consisteth  not  in  the  abundance 
of  things  that  he  possesseth,  any  more  than  a 
man's  life  consisteth  in  bodily  strength.  A  man's 
life  consisteth  in  the  full  and  free  exercise  of 
his  faculties.  But  for  the  full  and  free  exer- 
cise of  the  faculties  a  certain  amount  of  physical 
strength,  and  generally  a  certain  amount  of 
worldly  wealth  is  necessary,  and  he  who  fails  to 
do  what  he  can  to  obtain  both  the  health  and  the 
possessions,  necessary  to  the  full  exercise  of  his 
God-given  powers,  is  not  only  not  praiseworthy, 
but  even  criminal. 

It  is  true  that  some  of  the  loveliest  and  most 
useful  persons  that  the  world  has  ever  seen  have 
been  among  those  who,  having  found  it  impossible 
to  obtain  physical  health,  have  accepted  that  fact, 


THE  POOR  IN  SPIRIT  27 

and  have  found  even  better  self-expression  in  sick- 
ness than  in  health.  And  so  the  absolutely  love- 
liest and  most  useful  persons  that  the  world  has 
ever  known  have  been  those  who,  like  Jesus  and 
St.  Francis,  have  recognized  that  their  own 
peculiar  genius  could  find  its  best  expression  in 
poverty,  and  so  have  deliberately  chosen  it.  And 
not  very  far  below  this  class  have  been  some  who, 
having  found  poverty  inevitable,  have  accepted 
it  cheerfully. 

But  when  the  physical  or  material  state  in  which 
we  happen  to  be  seems  to  us  to  be  such  as  to 
interfere  with  our  best  development,  our  best  ex- 
pression, our  best  service,  we  should  not  be  con- 
tent to  remain  in  it,  if  it  is  possible  to  change  it. 
Of  course  if  we  cannot  change  it,  then  we  must 
believe  that  the  development  and  service  that  seem 
to  us  to  be  best,  are  not  really  best  and  be  satis- 
fied "  not  to  serve  God  more,  which  meaneth  other- 
wise, than  as  God  please." 

And  just  as  there  are  times  in  our  lives  when 
we  may  have  to  concentrate  our  energies  upon 
obtaining  physical  health,  so  there  are  times  in 
our  lives  when  some  of  us  may  have  to  concentrate 
our  energies  upon  obtaining  material  wealth ;  only 
both  should  be  regarded  as  means,  and  not  ends. 
We  sometimes  hear  a  mother  say  "  I  am  much 
more  interested  just  now  in  my  child's  physical 
development  than  I  am  in  his  intellectual  prog- 
ress." And  she  may  be  quite  right  in  feeling  as 
she  does.     Dollars  are  more  important  than  pen- 


28  TTT.TIMATE  IDEALS 

nios,  yet  there  is  truth  in  the  saying  "  Take  care 
of  the  pennies,  and  the  dolhirs  will  take  care  of 
themselves."  So  the  intellectual  and  the  spiritual 
are  more  important  than  the  physical  and  ma- 
terial, hut  it  is  sometimes  true  of  some  people  that 
if  they  can  be  made  to  take  care  of  the  physical 
and  material,  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  will 
take  care  of  themselves. 

No,  a  man's  life  consistcth  not  in  the  abundance 
of  the  things  that  lie  possesseth.  But  while  life 
is  not  made  up  of  things,  life  does  use  things ; 
and  it  is  not  right  wholly  to  ignore  this  fact. 
Wealth  ministers  directly  to  the  body,  but  the 
body,  rightly  used,  ministers  to  the  spirit,  and  it 
is  right  for  us  to  want  and  to  try  to  get  as  much 
wealth  as  is  necessary,  to  make  our  particular 
boiiies  minister,  in  the  best  way,  to  our  particular 
spirits.  If  the  bread  that  we  eat,  the  pleasures 
that  we  enjoy,  become  not  only  animal  strength 
and  animal  spirit,  but  courage,  endurance, 
thought,  imagination  and  love,  then  we  have  a 
right  to  just  as  much  bread,  to  just  as  much 
pleasure  as  can  be  so  transnuited.  Whatever  we 
can  honestly  have  that  helps  us,  comforts  us,  en- 
ables us  to  do  our  work  better,  enables  us  to  love 
more,  we  have  a  right  to  have. 

I  once  heard  a  man  ask  William  Morris  whether 
he  honestly  thought  that  a  chimney-sweep  should 
l)c  paid  as  much  as  a  university  professor.  Mor- 
ris replied,  somewhat  sarcastically,  "  If  in  order 
to  do  his  work  properly,  the  professor  needs  to 


THE  POOR  IN  SrililT  29 

eat  more  than  the  cliimney-sweep,  then  he  should 
Ik?  ])aid  more."  If  by  eatin/:^  he  meant,  as  Mr. 
Tuliiver  would  say,  "  not  exactly  eating,  but  all 
that  that  signifies,"  the  answer  was  a  correct  one. 
We  are  taught  to  pray  "  Give  us  this  day  our 
daily  bread,"  and  it  is  right  that  we  should 
have  our  daily  bread,  and  enjoy  it.  "  Man  does 
not  live  by  bread  alone,"  but  man  cannot  live 
without  bread ;  so  it  is  right  that  he  should  both 
pray  for  it  and  work  for  it.  Only  the  mind  and 
heart  should  \hi  set  chiefly  on  work  and  love,  not 
on  bread. 

It  is  sometimes  assumed  that  Jesus  meant  that 
all  men  should  be  poor,  but  a  close  reading  of  the 
Gospel  story  does  not  lead  to  this  conclusion.  He 
Himself  was  not  an  ascetic.  He  came  eating  and 
drinking,  and  they  said  "  Behold  a  gluttonous 
man,  and  a  wine-bibber,  a  friend  of  })ublicans  and 
sinners."  He  j)rayed  not  that  His  disciples 
should  be  taken  out  of  the  world,  but  that  they 
should  be  ke|)t  from  the  evil  that  is  in  the  world. 
For,  as  Phillips  Brooks  has  so  well  put  it.  He 
did  not  believe  that  i)erfection  could  be  realized 
by  "  cutting  off  everything  which  by  completing 
life  should  confuse  it ; "  it  is  not  so  easy  and 
simple  as  that.  He  had  friends  among  both  the 
rich  and  the  poor,  for  He  was  a  partisan  of 
neither  wealtli  nor  poverty.  Neither  was  good 
nor  bad  in  itself,  either  was  good  as  it  made  the 
man  good,  bad  as  it  made  the  man  bad. 

If  He  chose  the  life  of  a  poor  man  for  Himself, 


30  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

it  was  because  His  own  particular  nature,  His  own 
particular  genius  found  its  best  expression  in 
poverty.  Other  men's  natures,  other  men's 
geniuses,  might  find  their  best  expression  in  wealth, 
and  He  had  no  quarrel  with  them.  It  is  true  that, 
when  He  sent  His  disciples  out  to  teach  and  to 
preach.  He  told  them  that  they  were  not  to  take 
two  coats,  but  that  was  because  unnecessary  lug- 
gage would  impede  them  in  their  mission,  not  be- 
cause there  is  anything  wrong  in  having  two  coats. 
That  is  the  test  whether  wealth  is  right  for  us, 
will  it  help  us  or  hinder  us  in  our  mission?  We 
are  put  here  to  work  out  our  own  salvation,  but 
what  is  salvation  for  you  is  not  necessarily  salva- 
tion for  me,  and  therefore  the  ways  by  which  you 
find  salvation  may  differ,  and  rightly  differ,  from 
the  ways  by  which  I  find  it. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  Jesus  taught  that  we 
should  sell  all  that  we  have  and  give  to  the  poor, 
but  that  also  is  not  true.  He  told  one  young 
man  to  do  that,  but  that,  I  think,  was  because  for 
that  particular  young  man.  He  had  a  plan  of  life 
with  which  wealth  would  have  interfered.  Jesus 
"  beholding  him,  loved  him,"  and  wanted  him  for 
an  apostle,  and  in  the  apostle's  life  great  pos- 
sessions would  not  help,  but  liinder.  It  seems  to 
me  that  it  is  probable  that  all  through  his  min- 
istry, Jesus  felt  the  need  of  one  apostle  with  a 
little  broader  culture  than  the  others,  to  do  the 
work  which  St.  Paul  was  afterwards  called  upon 
to  do.     When  He  saw  this  man  He  was  drawn 


THE  POOR  IN  SPIRIT  31 

toward  him ;  he  felt  that  he  was  perhaps  the  man 
whom  He  was  seeking,  and  so  He  offered  him  the 
greatest  opportunity  which  was  ever  offered  to 
any  man  since  the  world  began,  an  opportunity 
perhaps  to  fill  the  places  of  St.  Paul  and  St.  John 
combined,  and  the  young  man  refused,  because  he 
had  great  possessions.  For  if  possessions  some- 
times help  us  to  self-realization,  they  are  just  as 
likely  to  prevent  self-realization,  and  this  is  the 
saddest  instance  on  record  of  their  having  done  so. 

What  then  is  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  mat- 
ter.'' "  A  man's  life  consisteth  not  in  the  abund- 
ance of  the  things  that  he  possesseth."  No.  A 
man's  life  consisteth  in  the  full  and  free  exercise 
of  his  faculties.  It  is  right  that  we  should  have 
food  and  drink,  but  we  are  here  to  satisfy  needs 
that  are  more  to  us  than  food  and  drink,  we  are 
here  to  find  ourselves,  to  find  our  own  souls,  the 
soul  that  is  greater  than  what  we  have,  than  what 
we  do,  or  even  than  what  we  think.  And  that  is 
another  way  of  saying  that  we  are  here  to  find 
God  in  our  souls,  to  glorify  the  God  who  is  within 
us,  and  to  prepare  to  enjoy  Him  forever.  It  is 
right  and  even  our  duty  to  do  what  we  can  to 
provide  the  worldly  goods  that  are  necessary  for 
that  full  and  free  exercise  of  our  faculties,  which 
is  essential  if  we  would  find  ourselves,  and  having 
done  that,  to  think  no  more  about  material  things. 

Some  men,  and  these  are  often  of  the  highest 
type,  have  faculties  for  whose  development  very 
little,  in  the  way  of  worldly  possessions,  is  needed. 


32  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

Others  liave  faculties  for  whose  proper  develop- 
ment more  is  required.  Some  authors  have  writ- 
ten better  when  surrounded  by  beautiful  things, 
others  have  preferred  to  write  in  perfectly  bare 
rooms ;  that  is,  some  have  found  beautiful  sur- 
roundings an  inspiration,  others  have  found  them 
a  distraction.  It  is  our  right  to  labor  for  what- 
ever we  find  inspiring,  our  duty  to  banish  from 
our  lives  whatever  proves  distracting. 

But  not  only  is  it  right  that  every  man  should 
labor  for  whatever  wealth  is  necessary  for  the 
exercise  of  his  faculties,  but  there  are  those  whose 
faculties  are  such,  that  it  is  impossible  to  exercise 
them  fully  and  freely  without  getting  rich,  and 
even  perhaps  very  rich.  If  such  men  realize  the 
immorality  of  seeking  to  acquire  wealth  by  win- 
ning it  from  others,  rather  than  by  earning  it  by 
service  to  their  fellowmen,  if  by  enriching  them- 
selves they  enrich  others  also,  then  they  may  be 
among  the  most  useful  members  of  society. 

Great  captains  of  industry  are  as  necessary  as 
great  rulers,  but  they  are  no  more  entitled  to  all 
the  profits  of  the  industry  which  they  control,  than 
rulers  are  to  all  the  wealth  of  the  nation  which 
they  rule.  But  if  the  object  of  their  lives  is  to 
make  gold  and  silver  as  common  stones,  not  in 
their  own  palaces,  but  in  Jeiiisalem,  if  incidentally 
the  precious  metals  abound  in  their  own  palaces 
also,  there  is  no  fault  to  be  found  with  them. 

It  is  even  right  that  they  should  enjoy  the  sen- 
sation of  making  money.     Every  one  enjoys  the 


THE  POOR  IN  SPIRIT  33 

sensation  of  exercising  liis  faculties  successfully. 
But  the  business  man,  the  chief  object  of  whose  life 
is  money,  is  on  a  par  with  the  clergyman,  the  chief 
object  of  whose  life  is  popularity.  To  a  certain 
extent  the  clergyman  has  a  right  to  enjoy  his 
popularity,  but  only  as  it  comes  as  a  by-product 
of  service.  So  the  business  man  has  a  right  to 
enjoy  getting  rich,  but  only  when  it  comes  as  a 
by-product  of  service.  And  when  wealth  has  not 
been  created  by  its  owner  but  inherited,  then  the 
responsibility  is  even  greater.  Such  a  man  is  in 
the  position  of  a  servant  who  has  been  .paid  in 
advance,  therefore  failure  on  his  part  to  serve  is 
especially  disgraceful.  And  whatever  we  have,  no 
matter  how  obtained,  is  ours,  not  to  keep,  but  to 
share.  Even  the  child  that  we  create  is  not  our 
own,  it  must  be  given  to  the  world. 


Ill 

THEY  THAT  MOURN 

"  Blessed  are  they  that  mourn,  for  they  shall 
be  comforted  !  "  Yes,  happy  are  they  that  mourn, 
for  true  happiness,  the  goal  of  life,  can  never  be 
reached  except  through  mourning.  No  one  who 
has  really  mourned  and  been  comforted  ever 
doubts  this.  He  knows  that  now  for  the  first  time, 
he  is  truly  happy;  what  he  called  happiness  before 
was  merely  light -heartedness.  "  Life,"  my  old 
Oxford  teacher,  York  Powell  used  to  say,  "  would 
be  a  poor,  tliin  thing  without  sorrow." 

"  Man  is  bom  to  trouble,  as  the  sparks  fly  up- 
ward." Suffering  is  our  birthright  as  human  be- 
ings, and  I  believe  that  there  is  no  one  who  would 
willingly  give  up  this  birthright,  for  it  is  only 
through  suffering  that  we  become  great,  enter  into 
fellowship  with  man  and  God,  and  so  go  on  unto 
perfection.  Was  not  Jesus  the  perfect  man,  that 
is,  the  man  whose  fellowship  with  man  and  God 
was  perfect,  because  He  was  the  Man  of  Sorrows 
and  acquainted  with  grief?  Therefore,  we  do  well 
to  pray  with  St.  Paul  that  we  may  know  the  fel- 
lowship of  His  suffering.  To  suffering  are  we 
called,  and  we  none  of  us  want  to  miss  our  calling. 

34 


THEY  THAT  MOURN  35 

Even  little  children  feel  the  need  of  sorrow  in 
life,  for  have  you  never  noticed  how  many  of  them 
love  sad  stories?  Is  not  this  because  even  they 
have  it  dimly  in  mind  that  life  is  not  complete 
without  suffering?  So  until  sorrow  has  come  to 
them  in  life  they  must  have  it  in  books.  For  how- 
ever much  we  may  dread  the  sad  experiences  of 
life,  we  none  of  us  want  to  miss  the  blessing  prom- 
ised to  those  who  mourn.  And  we  all  bear  testi- 
mony to  the  fact  that  there  can  be  no  real  joy 
without  suffering,  for  when  we  ourselves  are  in 
sorrow  and  want  comfort,  we  never  turn  to  those 
who  are  happy  as  we  once  were  happy,  but  only 
to  those  who  have  had  great  sorrow,  and  whose 
sorrow  has  been  turned  into  joy,  has  shed  such 
light  upon  their  souls  that  they  are  able  to  shed 
light  upon  other  souls. 

"  How  sad,"  we  sometimes  say,  "  to  see  the  lines 
of  suffering  come  upon  a  young  face !  "  Yes,  but 
how  much  sadder  it  is  when  these  lines  never  come ! 
"  Shall  our  pity,"  says  Maeterlinck,  "  go  forth  to 
him  who  at  times  will  weep  on  the  shore  of  an 
infinite  sea,  or  to  the  other  who  smiles  all  his  life 
without  cause  alone  in  his  little  room?  "  Yes, 
it  is  better  to  weep  on  the  Mount  of  Transfigura- 
tion in  the  company  of  apostles  and  prophets,  in 
the  company  of  Emanuel  Himself,  than  to  smile 
alone  in  the  valley. 

"  The  Lord  gave,  and  the  Lord  hath  taken  away, 
blessed  be  the  name  of  the  Lord !  "  That  is  the 
comfort,  still  to  be  able  to  say  "  Blessed  be  the 


36  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

name  of  the  Lord  " ;  to  realize  that  what  we  loved 
has  been  taken  from  us  only  because  something 
better  was  in  store  for  us,  that  our  angels  have 
left  us  only  that  archangels  may  come.  To  have 
proved,  too,  the  strength  of  our  own  souls,  for 
now  that  we  know  that  the  soul  is  strong  enough 
to  bear  and  to  bless,  we  can  face  the  future  without 
fear.  Yes,  it  pays  even  to  have  had  to  cry  out, 
"  My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  Thou  forsaken  me !  " 
just  to  prove  that  it  is  not  true,  that  our  God 
has  not  forsaken  us.  For  it  is  only  as  we  have 
uttered  that  cry,  that  we  know  certainly  that  it 
is  not  true,  that  our  God  can  never  forsake  us. 
Having  descended  into  hell,  and  found  that  He  is 
there,  we  know  that  He  is  everywhere. 

"  These  things,"  so  the  King  James'  version 
makes  Jesus  say,  "  are  the  beginning  of  sorrow." 
The  Revised  Version  reads,  "  These  things  are  the 
beginning  of  travail."  And  can  there  be  any  sat- 
isfying explanation  of  sorrow  save  that  it  is  the 
birth-pangs  of  the  spiritual  life ;  what  possible 
justification  of  pain  can  there  be  save  that  from 
it  new  life  is  born?  But  it  rests  with  us  to  deter- 
mine whether  the  new  life  shall  be  born,  whether 
our  sorrow  shall  remain  sorrow,  whether  it  shall 
become  nothing  but  pettiness  and  littleness,  sepa- 
rating us  from  man  and  God,  or  whether  it  shall 
be  transformed  into  the  joy  from  whence  new 
life  is  born,  fuller  life  for  ourselves  and  for  all 
those  about  us. 

And  when  we  have  succeeded  in  transforming  our 


THEY  THAT  MOURN  St 

sorrow  into  joy,  then  we  see  how  perfectly  fitted 
our  particular  burden  was  to  the  back.  When 
affliction  first  comes  to  us,  we  are  tempted  to  cry 
out,  "  Is  there  any  sorrow  like  unto  my  sorrow?  " 
But  when  it  is  over  we  say,  "  I  am  glad  that  I 
had  my  own  cross,  my  own  burden  to  bear,  and  not 
somebody  else's.  Only  my  own  cross  could  have 
strengthened  me  for  my  own  life."  So  we  thank 
God  for  the  sorrow  and  for  the  joy  that  has  come 
with  it.  And  having  borne  so  much  in  the  past, 
we  know  that  Ave  shall  be  able  to  bear  whatever 
may  come  to  us  in  the  future. 

Mourn  for  what.''  Mourn  for  anything  in  such 
a  way  that  it  throws  us  upon  the  power  which 
makes  for  righteousness  and  happiness,  the  Power 
which  in  one  sense  is  not  ourselves,  and  in  another 
sense  is  our  highest,  truest  self ;  the  Power  in  whom 
we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being.  And  mourn 
for  anything  in  such  a  way  as  throws  us  more 
upon  each  other,  or  makes  us  understand  each 
other  better.  For  what  is  the  blessing  that  comes 
to  those  who  mourn.''  Simply,  that  through  suf- 
fering, rightly  accepted,  we  enter  into  closer  rela- 
tions with  man  and  God ;  that  is  after  we  have 
suffered  awhile,  we  are  made  perfect,  stablished, 
strengthened,  settled. 

For  again  we  must  remind  ourselves  that  the 
perfect  man  is  he  whose  relations  with  God  and 
man  are  perfect,  he  who  loves  the  Lord  his  God 
with  all  his  heart,  with  all  his  soul,  with  all  his 
mind,  with  all  his  strength,  and  his  neighbor  as 


38  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

himself.  Love  and  love  only  is  the  fulfillment  of 
the  law.  But  we  only  love  as  we  understand,  and 
we  only  come  to  a  full  understanding  as  wc  suffer. 
The  Everlasting  Arms  are  always  underneath,  but 
we  do  not  always  appreciate  that  fact  until  sorrow 
presses  us  down  into  the  underneath.  Then  the 
comfort  is  that  we  enter  into  fellowship  with  the 
Comforter,  understand  the  heart  of  God. 

But  not  only  is  there  very  little  fellowship  with 
God  without  suffering,  there  is  also  very  little  real 
fellowship  with  man.  It  is  in  times  of  suffering 
that  we  "  cry  unto  our  fellow,  and  our  fellow  hears 
and  comes,  and  we  mourn  together  under  the  sun, 
until  again  we  laugh  together,  and  are  but  half 
sorry  between  us."  ^  And  when,  as  often  hap- 
pens, he  who  hath  no  fellow  in  times  of  sorrow 
gains  a  fellow,  surely  his  mourning  has  brought 
him  the  richest  blessing  that  can  come  to  any  one. 
No  wonder  that  his  sorrow  soon  becomes  but  a 
story  of  sorrow,  a  story  with  the  happiest  of  end- 
ings. For  "  it  is  fellowship  that  is  Heaven,  the 
lack  of  fellowship  that  is  Hell,  fellowship  that  is 
life,  the  lack  of  fellowship  that  is  death."  And  it 
is  not  only  the  particular  precious  fellowship  that 
often  comes  to  us  in  time  of  mourning,  it  is  also 
that  through  mourning  we  enter  into  fellowship, 
because  we  enter  into  understanding,  with  all  who 
mourn,  that  is  with  everybody. 

In  "  Ferishtah's  Fancies,"  Browning  has  put  this 

1  William  Morris'  "  Vision  of  John  Ball." 


THEY  THAT  MOURN  39 

all  in  a  nutshell.     Of  the  wise  Dervish  the  question 
is  asked: 

"  Wherefore  should  any  evil  hap  to  man, 
From  ache  of  flesh  to  agony  of  soul. 
Since  God's  all-mercy  mates  all-potency  ?  " 

In  reply  to  which  Ferishtah  asks 

"  What    were    the    bond    'twixt   man    and    man,    dost 

judge, 
Pain  once  abolished  ?  " 

He  then  proceeds  to  ask  the  inquirer  what  he 
thinks  of  the  reigning  Shah.  To  which  the  reply 
is  that  he  finds  nothing  to  admire  in  him,  he  is 
Shah  only  in  virtue  of  the  fact  that  he  happened 
to  be  the  eldest  son  of  the  last  Shah.  And  al- 
though Ferishtah  calls  his  attention  to  various 
things  in  the  Shah  that  he  might  admire,  all  fail 
to  move  him  until  he  tells  him  that  he  is  wasting 
away  with  internal  ulcer.  Then  the  scorner  be- 
comes all  sympathy,  is  eager  to  suggest  remedies. 
From  which  change  in  attitude  Ferishtah  draws 
the  conclusion 

"  Put  pain  from  out  the  world,  what  room  were  left 

For  thanks  to  God,  for  love  to  man.'' 

/Thanks  to  God, 

And  love  to  man,  from  man  to  take  these  away. 
And  what  is  man  worth  ?  " 

Since  there  is  no  growth  save  growth  in  under- 
standing, growth  in  love,  growth  in  understanding 


40  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

and  loving  God,  growth  in  understanding  and  lov- 
ing nian,  and  since  full  growth  and  understanding 
can  come  only  through  suffering,  it  seems  to  me 
wrong,  nothing  short  of  blasphemy  against  the 
Holy  Ghost,  the  Spirit  of  God  Avithin  us,  to  say, 
as  I  have  known  people  to  say,  "  I  will  steel  myself 
against  suffering,  I  will  not  allow  myself  to  suffer, 
I  will  not  allow  myself  to  feel  except  as  I  absolutely 
have  to."  There  are  even  those  who  go  so  far  as 
to  refuse  to  bestow  their  affection  upon  people 
whom  they  would  really  like  to  love,  because  they 
arc  afraid  of  the  suffering  that  it  might  involve. 
To  the  extent  that  one  is  able  to  carry  out  such  a 
resolution,  one  has  cut  one's  self  off  from  fellowship 
with  man  and  with  God.  That  is  one  has  failed 
to  fulfil  the  purpose  for  which  one  was  created. 
For  we  were  meant  to  live  and  to  taste  the  fulness 
of  life ! 

Among  the  folk  songs  which  Carmen  Sylva  has 
collected  in  "  The  Bard  of  the  Dimbo  Vitza,"  there 
is  one  entitled  "  The  Draught  of  Tears,"  the  story 
of  the  man  who,  having  swallowed  his  own  tears, 
has  no  longer  any  feeling  left  for  anything  or 
anybody. 

"  For  he  doth  thirst  no  more, 

Therefore  for  other's  thirst  he  has  no  pity. 

He  lets  the  rain  lie  heavy  on  his  cloak, 

And  blesses  not  the  rain; 

Sees  the  brooks  flow,  and  blesses  not  the  brooks. 

He  gazes  on  the  well's  cool  deepSj 

Nor  blesses  its  cool  deeps. 


THEY  THAT  MOURN  41 

For  this  is  he  who  drank  of  his  own  tears, 

His  thirst  is  qenched  forever; 

He  let  them  trickle  down  into  his  glass. 

Let  the  sun  glitter  on  them,  and  the  moon 

Mirror  herself  therein. 

And  sun  and  moon  both  said,  "  What  crystal  water !  " 

Then  did  he  put  it  to  his  lips  and  drink ! 

And  his  lips  spake,  "  What  fiery,  burning  water !  " 

This  is  the  man  who  drank  of  his  own  tears." 

Is  it  possible  to  imagine  a  life  a  more  hopeless 
failure  than  this.''  It  is  true  that  sometimes  the 
strength  of  the  will,  perverted  though  it  be,  of  the 
man  who  has  drunk  of  his  own  tears,  his  power 
to  accomplish  his  purpose,  calls  forth  a  certain 
sort  of  admiration,  but  how  inaccessible  he  is  !  He 
is  generally  a  correct  man,  at  least  he  is  free  from 
physical  vice.  He  is  frequently,  in  a  worldly  way, 
a  successful  man ;  indeed  his  motive  in  not  allowing 
himself  to  feel  has  often  been  the  fear  that  too 
great  feeling  would  interfere  with  his  efficiency,  his 
success  in  life.  But  is  there  any  real  success  in 
life  apart  from  loving  and  making  one's  self  loved.? 
And  is  not  the  merely  being  accessible  to  all  more, 
infinitely  more,  than  worldly  success,  or  even  than 
doing  tangible  things  for  other  people.'' 

I  do  not  mean  of  course  that  one  should  waste 
one's  self  in  diffuse,  meaningless  sociability,  or  in 
ineffectual,  fruitless  feeling;  but  I  do  mean  that 
somehow  each  of  us  should  make  it  clear  that  for 
us  to  live  is  to  love.  The  expression  that  love 
takes  will,  of  course,  differ  with  different  people, 


42  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

and  we  must  be  careful  not  to  condemn  any  one 
merely  because  he  follows  not  with  us,  but  in  some 
way  every  one  should  make  it  clear  that  for  him. 
the  object  of  life  is  love,  and  the  expression  of 
love. 

"  For  life,  with  all  it  yields  of  joy  and  woe, 
And  hope  and  fear,  believe  the  aged  friend. 
Is  just  our  chance  o'  the  prize  of  learning  love. 
How  love  might  be,  hath  been  indeed  and  is." 

To  refuse  the  joy  and  the  pain,  the  hope  and 
the  fear,  is  to  refuse  the  chance  of  the  prize,  that 
is,  to  refuse  our  chance  of  love,  our  chance  of  life, 
for  love  is  life. 

And  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  we  must  not  give 
ourselves  up  to  the  luxury  of  enjoying  sorrow,  we 
must  not  enshrine  ourselves  in  it,  we  must  not  make 
it  an  object  of  morbid  self-gratification.  It  is  cer- 
tainly one  of  the  good  signs  of  the  present  century 
that  people,  especially  women,  no  longer  feel  that 
it  is  a  fine  and  noble  thing  to  cherish  grief,  that 
INIaggie  Tulliver's  Aunt  Pullet  has  gone  out  of 
fashion.  The  objection  to  such  sentimental 
mourning  is  not  only  that  it  is  weakening  to  our- 
selves, and  depressing  to  others,  unfitting  both  the 
mourners,  and  those  with  whom  they  come  in  con- 
tact, for  doing  their  best  work  in  the  world,  but 
also  that  it  is  false.  God  is  a  Spirit,  and  they 
who  worship  Him  must  worship  Him  in  spirit  and 
in  truth.  The  whole  life  should  be  a  worship  of 
God,  mourning  quite  as   much  as   anything  else. 


THEY  THAT  MOURN  43 

But  nothing  which  is  not  in  spirit  and  in  truth 
can  be  worship.  Nothing  can  be  worship  that 
leads  to  nothing,  that  does  not  bear  fruit. 

Should  we  mourn  for  sin?  When  I  ask  the 
girls  in  my  Bible  classes  what  they  should  mourn 
for,  they  usually  put  sin  first,  but  I  suspect  that 
that  is  because  they  think  it  the  correct  thing  to 
say.  We  certainly  do  not  mourn  for  sin  as  our 
fathers  did,  we  no  longer  have  the  strong  sense  of 
sin  that  they  had.  Is  this  a  loss?  Frankly,  I 
think  it  a  great  gain.  There  are  just  two  temp- 
tations which  seem  to  me  to  be  the  most  dangerous 
to  which  we  are  ever  subjected:  First,  the  temp- 
tation to  be  so  well  satisfied  with  ourselves,  that 
we  have  no  disposition  to  improve;  and  second, 
the  disposition  to  be  so  ill  satisfied  with  ourselves, 
that  we  lack  the  strength  and  the  courage  to 
improve. 

I  remember  that  when  I  was  a  little  girl  my 
father  had  occasion  to  correct  me  for  something. 
Because  I  was  inclined  to  take  any  reproof  that 
came  from  him  overmuch  to  heart,  he  was  very 
timid  about  it.  So  he  took  me  upon  his  lap  and 
began,  oh !  so  tenderly !  "  My  little  girl,"  and 
when  I  asked  what  the  trouble  was,  he  said,  "  I 
would  rather  that  you  had  not  done  so  and  so." 
Wlien  I  said  that  I  was  sorry,  he  replied,  "  I 
don't  want  you  to  be  sorry,  I  only  want  you 
not  to  do  it  again."  That  is  the  kind  of  father 
God  is.  He  does  not  want  us  to  be  sorry.  He 
only  wants  us  not  to  do  it  again. 


44  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

For  sin,  like  disease,  is  to  be  dwelt  upon,  only 
long  enough  to  understand  it,  and  get  rid  of  it. 
We  must  understand  it,  not  only  that  we  may 
get  rid  of  it  in  ourselves  and  others,  but  also  that 
through  this  understanding  we  may  come  into 
closer  fellowship,  not  only  with  God  who  forgives 
sin,  but  also  with  man  who  sins.  For  it  is 
through  understanding  our  own  sin  that  we  come 
to  understand  the  sin  of  others,  and  so  enter  into 
fellowship  with  our  fellow  sinners,  and  with  God 
who  understands  and  forgives  us  all.  That  is 
God's  purpose  for  us  in  all  the  mourning  that  He 
sends  to  us,  deeper  fellowship.  And  we  can  only 
miss  this  purpose  as  we  let  mourning  over  dis- 
appointment make  us  bitter,  or  mourning  over 
sin  make  us  weak. 


IV 

THE  MEEK 

"  Blessed  are  the  meek,  for  they  shall  inherit 
the  earth !  " 

Here  is  another  example  of  the  fact  that  be- 
cause we  have  always  been  familiar  with  the 
Beatitudes,  we  take  them  as  a  matter  of  course, 
almost  as  axiomatic,  and  yet  when  we  stop  to 
think  about  them,  we  realize  that  they  are  not 
at  all  self-evident.  Indeed  most  of  them,  if  we 
should  hear  them  for  the  first  time,  would  be  ex- 
tremely surprising  and  puzzling,  and  perhaps 
none  of  them  would  seem  more  of  an  enigma  than 
this  one.  For  myself,  I  had  said  this  Beatitude 
thoughtlessly  for  years,  and  when  I  first  really 
did  give  it  a  little  superficial  thought,  I  found  it 
unworthy,  and  even  provoking,  "  the  least  of  all 
the  Beatitudes,  and  not  meet  to  be  called  a  Beati- 
tude." 

In  the  first  place,  in  the  face  of  Jesus'  constant 
teaching  about  riches,  the  blessing  promised,  to 
inherit  the  earth,  seemed  a  rather  doubtful  good, 
and  at  least  altogether  out  of  keeping  with  the 
other  blessings  promised.  Everywhere  else  the 
blessing    was    spiritual,    here    it    was    material. 

4ff 


46  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

Moreover  in  actual  life,  this  blessing,  such  as  it 
is,  does  not  seem  to  be  realized.  Everywhere  we 
see  that  if  inheriting  the  earth  means  getting  rich, 
it  is  the  pushing,  aggressive  man  who  does  it,  not 
the  meek,  patient  man. 

And  if  the  reward  is  a  doubtful  blessing,  so  the 
quality  to  be  rewarded  seemed  to  me  rather  a 
questionable  virtue.  When  I  ask  my  girls  what 
meekness  is,  they  sometimes  say  mean-spiritedness. 
And  I  do  think  that  it  is  something  like  this  that 
we  commonly  have  in  mind  when  we  use  the  word, 
and  we  none  of  us  really  believe  that  mean-spirit- 
edness is  a  virtue.  Indeed  meekness,  as  we  com- 
monly understand  it,  instead  of  arousing  our  ad- 
miration, generally  throws  us  into  a  more  or  less 
violent  state  of  irritation.  We  associate  it  with 
the  worm  that  never  turns,  or  with  the  ass  who 
is  too  stupid  and  phlegmatic  to  resent  the  most 
unjust  treatment,  and  we  do  not  admire  either 
animal. 

Indeed,  when  I  heard  of  a  drunken  brute,  who 
gave  as  his  reason  for  beating  his  wife,  that  he 
was  tired  of  seeing  her  around  looking  so  meek, 
I  confess  to  feeling  some  sympathy  with  him. 
Workers  among  the  poor  tell  us  that  it  is  the 
meek,  patient  wife,  whose  sole  object  seems  to  be 
to  please  her  husband,  who  is  most  often  abused. 
One  man  is  reported  to  have  said,  "  No,  I  don't 
never  strike  my  missis.  You  see  she  would  strike 
back,  and  though  I  could  easily  get  the  best  of 
her,  I  don't  like  no  rumpus  like  that.'*     And  I 


THE  MEEK  47 

know  of  a  district  nurse  who,  bearing  this  in  mind, 
advises  the  women  in  her  district  never  to  take  a 
blow,  without  in  some  way  getting  even  with  their 
husbands.  The  results  of  acting  upon  this  advice 
appear  generally  to  be  excellent,  blows  soon  cease. 

And  when  we  got  higher  up  in  the  social  scale, 
we  do  not  find  the  member  of  the  family  who 
has  no  life  of  her  own,  who  is  at  every  one's  beck 
and  call,  the  one  who  is  most  loved  or  admired. 
Too  often  the  tendency  is  to  take  advantage  of 
such  people,  and  then,  instead  of  thanking  them, 
to  snub  them.  We  are  so  sure  of  their  attentions 
that  we  are  not  at  all  grateful  for  them ;  whatever 
they  do,  we  expect  more. 

And  then  although  we  may  like  the  thing  that 
they  do,  the  manner  in  which  they  do  it  is  often 
offensive,  for  their  very  anxiety  to  please  makes 
them  shy,  clumsy  and  awkward.  It  seems  as 
though  their  very  desire  for  love  makes  it  impos- 
sible for  them  to  win  it.  Moreover,  they  appear 
never  to  expect  to  win  it.  They  seem  to  feel 
that  they  do  not  deserve  it.  We  prefer  that  they 
should  be  a  little  less  humble,  a  little  less  conscious 
that  love  is  not  for  them,  and  then  perhaps  they 
would  obtain  it.  And  all  the  time  they  irritate 
us  the  more,  because  they  are  so  good  and  so 
self-sacrificing,  that  they  put  us  in  the  wrong. 
There  seems  to  be  no  excuse  for  not  liking  them, 
but  we  cannot.  Sometimes,  like  the  drunken  hus- 
band, we  get  tired  of  seeing  them  around  looking 
so  meek,  and  we  speak  to  them  with  a  severity 


48  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

that  we  know  they  have  not  deserved.  They  take 
it  with  an  air  of  meek  resignation,  as  though  they 
were  conscious  of  having  merited  it,  or  at  least 
as  though  it  was  what  they  expected.  We  would 
prefer  that  they  should  get  angry  with  us,  and 
give  us  the  rebuke  that  we  know  that  we  ought  to 
have. 

But  are  we  altogether  wrong  in  feeling  as  we 
do  about  these  so-called  meek  people.'*  I  think 
that  a  careful  analysis  of  the  case  will  show  that 
we  are  not.  In  the  first  place,  while  such  people 
submit  to  everybody,  do  things  for  everybody, 
they  do  not  appear  to  actively  enjoy  doing  any- 
thing; they  are  utterly  lacking  in  enthusiasm. 
Their  attitude  is  simply  that  of  submitting  to 
what  is  put  upon  them ;  they  do  what  they  do 
either  from  a  mistaken  idea  of  duty,  or  else  be- 
cause they  crave  a  love,  that  because  of  their 
lack  of  personality,  they  can  never  win.  We  only 
love  one  who  is  somebody,  no  one  loves  a  nobody. 

That  is  the  great  trouble  with  them,  they  are 
nobodies,  they  are  absolutely  lacking  in  the  initia- 
tive which  is  the  first  essential  of  personality. 
They  have  no  scheme  of  life  at  all,  no  definite 
things  that  they  want  to  do,  no  definite  path  on 
which  they  wish  to  advance,  no  definite  self  which 
they  wish  to  develop.  Of  course  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  having  too  unyielding  a  scheme  of  life, 
but  perhaps  it  is  no  worse  to  think  too  much 
about  the  self  than  it  is  to  have  no  self  to  think 


THE  MEEK  49 

about,  no  worse  to  be  selfish  than  it  is  to  have  no 
self  to  be  selfish. 

And  after  all  society  is  not  so  much  in  danger 
from  the  really  bad  people,  as  it  is  from  the  weak, 
vague,  drifting  people,  who  having  no  initiative, 
no  minds  of  their  own,  are  open  to  suggestions 
of  all  kinds.  If  there  is  danger  of  thinking  of 
ourselves  more  higlily  than  we  ought  to  think, 
there  is  at  least  an  equal  danger  of  thinking  of 
ourselves  more  lowly  than  we  ought  to  think.  It 
has  been  well  said  that  one  cannot  argue  on  one's 
knees,  therefore  that  it  is  right  that  he  who  is 
on  his  knees  to  everybody  should  be  respected  by 
nobody.  Indeed,  we  are  coming  more  and  more 
to  see  that  if  meek  resignation  means  stupid  or 
thoughtless  resignation,  it  is  a  thing  not  to  be 
admired,  but  to  be  condemned.  We  must  accept 
even  the  laws  of  God,  not  as  the  servant  who 
knoweth  not  what  his  Lord  doeth,  but  as  the 
friend,  who  knows  something,  and  who  is  trying 
to  know  more.  We  must  dare  to  search  and 
question. 

But  if  meek  people  of  this  type  have  any  object 
in  life  at  all,  it  is  simply  to  please,  or,  worse  still, 
just  not  to  offend.  And  generally  speaking  the 
inoffensive  person  is  the  most  offensive  person  of 
all.  It  may  be  all  very  well  for  the  dog  to  live 
simply  to  please  his  master,  for  we  do  not  expect 
him  to  have  a  scheme  of  life  of  his  own.  It  may 
be  quite  right  for  the  dog  to  live  chiefly  to  gratify 


60  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

his  master's  whims,  but  we  think  it  no  more  right 
for  the  man  to  live  wholly  to  gratify  another's 
whims,  than  it  would  be  to  live  wholly  for  the 
gratification  of  his  own  whims.  If  one  is  self- 
sacrificing  it  should  be  for  a  real  purpose.  We 
should  love  our  neighbor  as  ourselves ;  but  we 
should  love  ourselves  wisely,  and  so  we  should  love 
our  neighbor  wisely. 

Just  as  we  are  to  love  the  Lord  our  God  with 
all  our  minds,  so  in  our  love  for  ourselves  and  our 
neighbor,  the  mind  should  have  its  part.  The 
command  "  Whatsoever  ye  would  that  men  should 
do  to  you,  do  ye  even  so  to  them,"  is  to  be  inter- 
preted not  what  ye  would  when  ye  are  whimsical, 
but  what  ye  would,  when  3^e  use  your  best  judg- 
ment. In  what  we  do  for  our  neighbor,  we  are 
under  the  same  obligation  to  use  our  judgment 
as  we  are  in  what  we  do  for  ourselves.  Only  very 
young  children  like  people  who  live  solely  to  please 
them.  And  there  are  even  children  who,  having 
attained  their  personality  at  an  early  age,  despise 
such  people.  The  truth  is  we  feel  that  one  who 
lives  simply  to  gratify  our  whims,  not  only  has 
no  personality  of  his  own,  but  has  a  very  low 
estimate  of  our  personality.  For  if  we  are  really 
developed  people,  we  do  not  consider  it  a  matter 
of  importance  that  our  whims  should  be  gratified, 
and  we  are  offended  with  any  one  who  supposes 
that  we  do. 

And  the  sympathy  of  these  people  is  often  quite 
as  bungling  as  their  efforts  to  please.     For  hav- 


THE  MEEK  51 

ing  no  personality  of  their  own,  they  have  no 
understanding  of  the  personality  of  another,  they 
sympathize  with  one  person  in  exactly  the  same 
way  that  they  sympathize  with  another.  Here 
the  dog  has  a  great  advantage  over  them,  for  he 
at  least  does  not  make  the  mistake  of  thinking 
that  we  are  sad  when  we  are  not.  He  simply 
feels  that  we  are  sad  or  glad,  and  sympathizes 
with  our  moods,  without  asking  what  has  pro- 
duced them ;  and  then  he  cannot  talk  and  say 
stupid  things.  The  undeveloped  person  argues 
that  what  would  make  him  sad,  would  make  any 
one  else  sad,  and  so,  having  had  what  should  make 
us  sad,  we  must  be  sad.  We,  on  the  contrary, 
are  perhaps  not  sad  at  all,  or  if  we  are,  and  do 
want  sympathy,  it  must  be  expressed  in  the  way 
in  which  our  personality  demands.  We  are  not 
children,  we  sorrow  not  as  the  child  sorrows,  and 
it  is  not  the  child's  or  even  the  dog's  sympathy 
that  we  want  from  the  grown  person. 

Yes,  there  is  beauty  in  the  giving  of  one's  self, 
and  it  is  only  as  we  give  ourselves  that  we  can 
ever  fully  become  ourselves,  we  must  go  out  of 
ourselves  to  find  ourselves.  But  before  we  can 
give,  we  must  have  something  to  give,  we  must  in 
some  manner  at  least  become  ourselves  before  we 
can  give  ourselves.  We  cannot  fulfill  our  duty 
to  others,  except  as  we  have  first  fulfilled  our 
duty  to  ourselves,  have  done  our  utmost  to  make 
ourselves  as  worth  while  as  possible. 

"  Among  the  many  beautiful  things  that  turn 


62  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

through  mistaken  use  to  utter  evil,"  says  Ruskin, 
"  I  am  not  sure  but  that  the  thoughtlessly  meek 
and  self-sacrificing  spirit  of  good  men  must  be 
named  as  the  fatallest."  For  when  we  starve  our 
own  souls  in  order  to  give  to  other  souls,  we 
often  find  not  only  that  there  is  not  enough  for 
them  and  for  us,  but  even  that  there  is  absolutely 
nothing  for  either  of  us.  So  the  wise  virgins  were 
not  selfish,  but  wise,  when  they  refused  to  give 
their  oil  to  the  foolish  virgins.  It  is  possible  for 
us  to  use  our  lamps  to  lighten  the  pathway  of 
others,  but  to  try  to  give  them  of  our  oil  is  simply 
to  squander  it.  Too  many  mothers  have  not 
given  themselves  so  much  as  wasted  themselves, 
ministering  to  their  children ;  for  children  want 
not  so  much  what  their  mothers  can  do  for  them, 
they  want  their  mother.  Love  should  go  out  of 
itself  to  find  itself,  not  to  lose  itself. 

The  truth  is  that  the  present  generation  has 
put  a  bad  meaning  into  the  word  meek,  just  as  it 
has  put  a  bad  meaning  into  the  word  pious.  True 
meekness,  the  meekness  that  Jesus  commends,  is 
the  exact  opposite  of  the  stupid  aimlessness  that 
now  passes,  or  fails  to  pass,  under  that  name. 
So  far  from  the  meek  man  being  the  man  who 
has  no  aim  in  life,  he  is  rather  the  man  who  is 
all  aim,  the  man  whose  mind  is  so  set  upon  his 
aim  that  he  entirely  forgets  himself,  forgets  to 
be  exalted  and  forgets  to  be  abased ;  he  has 
neither  false  conceit,  nor  false  modesty. 

And  what  is  the  aim-f*     Tagore,  who  has  cast 


THE  MEEK  63 

more  illumination  upon  this  subject  than  any  one 
else  has  done,  has  well  expressed  it  when  he  says: 
"  The  aim  of  the  teachers  of  India  was  the  realiza- 
tion of  the  soul,  or  in  other  words,  gaining  the 
world  in  perfect  truth.  When  Jesus  said, 
"  Blessed  are  the  meek,  for  they  shall  inherit  the 
earth  "  he  meant  this.  He  proclaimed  the  truth, 
that  when  man  gets  rid  of  his  pride  of  self,  then 
he  comes  into  his  true  inheritance.  No  more  has 
he  to  fight  his  way  into  his  position  in  the  world! 
it  is  secure  to  him  everywhere  by  the  immortal 
right  of  his  soul.  Pride  of  self  interferes  with  the 
proper  function  of  the  soul,  which  is  to  realize 
itself  by  perfecting  its  union  with  the  world  and 
the  world's  God." 

No,  meekness  is  not  the  aimlessness  that  submits 
blindly  to  circumstances,  to  what  we  falsely  call 
destiny !  It  is  rather  the  wisdom  that  controls 
circumstances,  that  controls  destiny.  At  its  low- 
est it  is  almost  synonymous  with  self-control,  or, 
as  Henry  Ward  Beecher  puts  it,  it  is  "  the  best 
side  of  a  man  under  provocation,  maintaining 
itself  in  the  best  mood,  and  thus  controlling  all 
men.'*  At  its  highest  it  is  the  complete  absorp- 
tion of  the  soul  in  high  aims,  that  makes  conscious 
self-control  unnecessary ;  there  seems  to  be  no 
self  to  control,  the  man  has  lost  himself  in  his 
aim,  which  is  only  another  way  of  saying  that  he 
has  lost  himself  in  his  God. 

One  of  our  great  men  has  recently  made  the 
statement  that  we  despise  a  nation,  as  we  despise 


54  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

an  individual,  who  does  not  resent  an  insult.  But 
do  we  despise  the  individual  who  does  not  resent 
an  insult?  I  grant  that  there  is  a  tendency  to 
despise  the  man  who  is  cowed  by  an  insult;  he 
gets  on  our  nerves.  But  what  about  the  man  who 
is  so  occupied  in  what  he  is  doing,  that  he  simply 
does  not  know  that  he  has  been  insulted? 

Some  time  ago  I  heard  of  a  man  who  was  serv- 
ing on  an  important  commission.  In  expressing 
his  opinion  on  the  subject  under  debate  he  said 
something  that  so  infuriated  another  member  of 
the  commission,  that  he  struck  him  in  the  face 
with  a  roll  of  paper  that  he  happened  to  have  in 
his  hand.  But  the  speaker  was  so  occupied  in 
what  he  was  sa3'ing  that  he  did  not  even  notice  it, 
he  just  finished  what  he  had  to  say.  He  could 
hardly  be  said  to  exercise  self-control,  for  he 
scarcely  knew  that  he  had  been  struck.  And  he 
carried  his  point,  for  when  he  had  finished,  the 
whole  commission,  even  the  man  that  had  struck 
him,  acknowledged  that  he  was  right. 

He  carried  his  point !  Herein  is  the  clue  to  the 
meaning  of  the  expression  "  to  inherit  the  earth." 
For  what  is  an  heir?  Is  he  not  the  man  who  is 
entitled  to  a  certain  inheritance,  a  certain  place 
in  the  world?  and  he  comes  into  his  inheritance 
when  he  takes  that  place,  accomplishes  the  thing 
that  God  meant  him  to  do,  fulfils  God's  ideal  for 
him.  Thus  it  is  that  the  heir  of  God  comes  into 
liis  father's  house,  into  his  home. 

My  old  Wellesley  teacher,  Miss  Morgan,  used 


THE  MEEK  56 

to  define  home  as  the  place  where  we  can  be  our 
best.  And  when  we  stop  to  think  of  it,  this  is  not 
really  an  unusual  sense  of  the  word,  it  is  what  we 
all  mean  when  we  use  the  expression  "  at  home." 
We  feel  at  home  with  a  person,  or  in  a  place, 
when  we  are  at  our  ease  with  that  person,  or  in 
that  place,  and  so  able  to  be  and  to  do  our  best. 
In  that  sense  are  we  not  all  here  in  the  world  to 
find  our  home,  in  order  that  we  may  find  our- 
selves? In  the  beginning  God  made  a  world  for 
each  separate  man.  He  puts  us  here  in  order 
that  each  might  find  his  own  world,  his  own  in- 
heritance, his  own  home.  And  it  is  only  the  meek 
who  can  fully  find  his  home,  and  he  will  never  fail 
to  do  so.  For  home,  like  the  kingdom  of  heaven, 
is  within  us. 

To  go  back  to  Henry  Ward  Beecher's  defini- 
tion, "  Meekness  is  the  best  side  of  a  man  under 
provocation,  maintaining  himself  in  the  best 
mood  and  thus  controlling  all  men,"  the  meek  man 
controls  all  men,  as  the  man  whom  I  have  cited 
did,  because  he  makes  them  see  that  he  is  right, 
and  thus  he  controls  them  not  only  outwardly,  but 
inwardly.  It  is  sometimes  possible  to  control  men 
outwardly  by  making  them  afraid  of  us,  but  in 
that  case  we  have  not  controlled  them,  we  have 
only  controlled  their  actions.  Indeed,  he  who 
obeys  because  he  does  not  dare  to  disobey  is  al- 
ways in  silent  inward  rebellion  —  in  fact,  any 
conscious  obedience  is,  in  a  sense,  rebellious.  In 
order  to  really  control  others,  we  must  first  con- 


56  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

trol  ourselves,  hence  real  meekness  differs  little 
from  wise  self-control. 

But  the  man  who  is  meek  in  the  perverted  sense 
in  which  the  word  was  used  at  the  beginning  of 
this  paper  never  controls  any  one,  not  even  him- 
self, for  he  has  no  self  to  control.  He  has  not 
controlled  himself,  but  has  repressed  himself,  until 
there  is  no  self  left,  either  to  control  or  to  re- 
press. Self-control  differs  from  self-repression, 
in  that  it  is  used  only  as  a  means  toward  an  end. 
Self-control  means  simply  the  subduing  or  the 
keeping  within  proper  proportions  of  such  in- 
stincts, or  impulses,  as  there  is  a  definite  reason 
for  subduing  or  guiding,  but  self-repression  means 
an  instinctive,  perhaps  an  inherited,  subduing  of 
instincts  and  impulses,  merely  for  the  sake  of  sub- 
duing them,  and  that  is  nothing  less  than  the  re- 
pression or  annihilation  of  life  itself.  The  self 
has  not  been  controlled,  it  has  been  destroyed, 
for  when  life  ceases  to  be  eager,  spontaneous  and 
enthusiastic,  it  ceases  to  be  life  at  all. 

The  truly  meek  are  never  the  victims  of  their 
temperaments,  but  on  the  other  hand  they  never 
seek  to  destroy  their  temperaments,  for  to  de- 
stroy the  temperament  is  to  destroy  the  personal- 
ity. They  never  subdue  themselves,  they  only 
subdue  that  which  keeps  them  from  being  them- 
selves. They  do  not  blindly  submit  to  circum- 
stances, for  there  is  a  definite  goal  which  they 
are  striving  to  reach.  From  this  goal  they  are 
turned  by  no  obstacle  which  it  is  possible  to  over- 


THE  MEEK  57 

come,  but  when  the  obstacles  are  really  insur- 
mountable, they  waste  no  strength  bubbling  in  im- 
potent fury.  And  thus  they  reach  their  goal,  for 
he  that  ruleth  his  own  spirit  is  greater  than  he 
that  taketh  a  city,  and  he  generally  takes  the 
city! 

For  true  meekness  will  always  in  the  deepest 
sense  control  destiny,  and  it  always  knows  that  it 
will.  Therefore,  the  truly  meek  man  may  be  de- 
fined as  the  man  who  sees  the  proportions  of 
things ;  the  man  who  has  set  his  feet  firm  on  some 
portion  of  eternal  truth,  and  then  is  infinitely 
patient  with  people  who  are  too  stupid,  or  even 
too  wicked,  to  perceive  it,  for  he  is  sure  that  the 
truth  will  in  the  end  prevail ;  the  truth  that  he 
sees  in  so  far  as  it  is  the  real  truth,  but  in  any 
case,  the  real  truth. 

And  he  works  for  the  truth  that  he  sees  so  long 
as  he  so  sees  it,  but  keeps  his  eyes  open  for  an 
ever-widening  vision.  His  attitude  is  "  Whatever 
is,  is  best,  when  I  have  done  my  best."  He  is  not 
discouraged  even  when  he  has  not  done  his  best. 
For  then  his  attitude  is  "  Whatever  is,  even  when 
it  is  the  result  of  my  not  having  done  my  best,  is 
the  best  that  I  can  have  now,  and  therefore  it  is 
to  be  made  the  best  of.  Instead  of  giving  up  the 
struggle,  or  wasting  time  in  repining,  let  me  now 
do  the  best  that  I  can  with  what  is  left."  Per- 
haps, too,  in  a  larger  sense,  in  the  great  working 
out  of  things,  it  may  even  turn  out  to  be  the  abso- 
lute best.     For  even  our  sins  can  be  made  a  means 


68  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

of  strengthening  our  inner  lives.  They  too  can 
shed  a  light  upon  our  souls,  can  be  made  the  step- 
ping stones  on  which  we  rise  to  higher  things. 

Even  when  we  have  done  our  best,  there  will  be, 
of  course,  circumstances  which  we  cannot  control, 
calamities  that  we  cannot  avert.  The  farmer 
cannot  control  the  weather,  but  that  does  not  pre- 
vent him  from  working  as  hard  as  he  can  to  con- 
trol such  forces  of  nature  as  it  is  possible  to  bend 
to  his  purposes.  So  the  truly  meek  man  uses  all 
the  means  at  his  disposal  to  avert  tragedy,  but 
when  in  spite  of  everything  it  comes,  he  accepts 
it  with  equanimity,  not  in  the  spirit  of  resignation, 
but  of  co-operation.  For  it  is  not  resignation 
that  gladdens  and  uplifts  us,  it  is  co-operation. 

We  pray,  "  Thy  will  be  done,"  but  we  should 
pray  gladly,  not  sorrowfully,  and  M'e  should  not 
only  pray  for  it,  we  should  work  for  it.  "  For 
this  is  the  will  of  God,  even  your  sanctification." 
But  we  are  to  work  out  our  own  sanctification, 
the  will  of  God  should  not  be  something  to  which 
we  sorrowfully  submit,  but  something  for  which 
we  gladly  work.  And  therefore  our  business  is  to 
find  out  what  it  is,  and  work  for  it.  "  Hence- 
forth I  call  you  not  servants,  but  friends,  for  the 
servant  knoweth  not  what  his  lord  doeth,"  but  it 
is  the  friend's  business  to  read  the  mind  of  his 
friend.  So  the  business  of  life  is  to  read  the  mind 
of  God  in  such  a  way  as  to  become  the  friend  of 
God,  to  find  out  what  the  good  and  perfect  will  of 
God  is,  and  to  do  it. 


THE  MEEK  59 

And  when  we  find  that  we  have  made  mis- 
takes, so  far  from  being  discouraged,  we  should 
rejoice  that  we  have  acquired  the  wisdom  to  per- 
ceive our  errors.  For  if  what  seemed  right  to  us 
yesterday  seems  wrong  today,  it  is  because  we 
have  passed  on  to  a  higher  plane,  have  come  to 
know  God  better.  For  what  is  God,  or  God's  will, 
to  any  one  of  us,  save  our  own  highest  ideal  of 
righteousness?  And  we  are  to  rise  to  higher 
tilings,  not  only  on  stepping  stones  of  our  dead 
selves,  but  on  stepping  stones  of  our  dead  ideals. 

Nothing  in  the  character  of  Goethe  is  more  in- 
spiring, than  the  joy  with  wliich  he  welcomed  the 
experiences,  which  contributed  to  unlearning  what 
was  false,  as  well  as  the  experiences  which  con- 
tributed to  learning  what  was  true.  For  nothing 
was  so  joyous  to  him  as  to  feel  himself  grow,  and 
he  grew  by  unlearning  as  well  as  by  learning. 
Therefore  it  was  an  object  with  him,  while  pre- 
serving his  identity,  to  be  constantly  putting  his 
old  self  behind  him.  "  The  Regeneration,"  he 
writes  from  Italy,  "  which  is  changing  me  within 
and  without,  continues  to  work.  The  more  I  am 
obliged  to  renounce  my  former  self,  the  more  de- 
lighted I  am." 

"  The  soul  that  is  meekly  honest !  "  I  came 
across  that  expression  the  other  day.  What  does 
this  mean  save  the  soul  that  is  honestly  seeking 
the  truth,  instead  of  opposing  his  own  will  to  it.^* 
who  is  willing  to  give  up  even  his  conception  of 
truth  for  what  proves  to  be  the  real  truth,  the 


60  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

soul  that  docs  not  resent  or  resist  the  truth,  the 
soul  that  receives  sorrow  and  disappointment 
meekly,  so  that  it  becomes  to  it  sweetness  and  not 
bitterness,  a  source  of  strength  rather  than  a 
source  of  weakness. 

We  attain  this  poise,  this  self-possession,  this 
equanimity,  this  meekness,  as  we  have  perfect  con- 
fidence that  if  we  honestly  strive  to  do  our  part, 
what  ever  has  been,  is,  and  will  be,  is  right.  No 
mistake,  no  calamity  is  then  irreparable;  we  can 
always  convert  it  into  something  that  is  not  a 
mistake,  something  that  is  not  calamity.  For  the 
Father  hath  put  all  things  into  our  hands,  all 
things  that  we  ought  to  have,  and  we  come  from 
God,  and  go  to  God. 

So  much  for  the  attitude  of  the  meek  toward 
external  people,  toward  external  things.  What 
about  their  attitude  toward  themselves?  Well, 
they  do  not  think  of  themselves  more  highly  than 
the}'^  ought  to  think,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  they 
do  not  think  of  themselves  more  lowly  than  they 
ought  to  think.  Indeed,  their  charm  consists  in 
the  fact  that  they  do  not  seem  to  think  of  them- 
selves at  all.  They  have  neither  the  self-appre- 
ciation, nor  the  self-depreciation,  both  of  which 
spring  from  thinking  too  much  about  ourselves, 
and  both  of  which  prevent  people  from  entering 
into  easy  relations  with  their  fellows.  Being 
neither  shy  nor  self-assertive,  they  are  at  ease  in 
any  company.  They  can  take  either  a  high  place 
or  a  low  place  without  self-consciousness,  think- 


THE  MEEK  61 

ing  none  the  better  of  themselves  because  it  is 
high,  and  none  the  less  of  themselves  because  it  is 
low.  The  important  thing  is  not  that  it  should 
be  a  high  place  or  a  low  place,  but  that  it  should 
be  their  place,  the  place  which  they  can  fill.  They 
know  that  to  belittle  themselves  is  just  as  snobbish 
as  to  exalt  themselves,  that  it  is  just  as  bad  to  be 
conscious  that  the  place  that  they  can  fill  is  a 
small  one,  as  it  is  to  be  conscious  that  it  is  a 
great  one. 

For  whatever  talents  we  may  possess  are  gifts, 
and  there  is  no  occasion  to  be  exalted  if  they  have 
been  bestowed,  or  to  be  humiliated  if  they  have 
been  withlield.  And  when  we  cannot  do  great 
things  ourselves,  we  should  be  just  as  glad  to  see 
others  do  them,  for  in  the  life  of  the  world,  the 
important  thing  is  not  that  we  should  do  great 
things,  but  that  great  things  should  be  done. 
And  in  our  own  lives  the  important  thing  is  that 
we  should  be  and  do  what  we  can,  be  that  little 
or  great.  We  are  to  run  with  patience  the  race 
that  is  set  before  us,  but  that  race  is  not  one  in 
which  the  object  is  to  get  ahead  of  others,  but  one 
in  which  the  object  is  to  reach  the  goal,  a  goal 
which  we  can  all  reach,  for,  for  each  of  us  the 
goal  is  simply  his  best.  And  my  attaining  my 
best  self  docs  not  interfere  with  your  attaining 
your  best  self. 

However,  this  does  not  mean  that  each  of  us 
is  to  be  content  with  the  place  in  which  he  may 
at  any  particular  time  find  himself,  if  that  place 


62  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

does  not  happen  to  be  the  one  in  which  he  can  be 
his  best.  We  are  not  to  choose  the  principal 
place  at  the  feast,  but  there  is  a  difference  be- 
tween wanting  the  principal  place  at  the  feast,  a 
mere  honor,  and  wanting'  an  opportunity  for 
fuller  development  and  wider  service,  more  and 
better  work.  It  used  to  be  said  that  Abraham 
Lincoln  never  sought  an  office,  but  I  am  glad  that 
the  facts  correct  that  popular  superstition. 
When  the  elder  Pitt  said  to  the  Duke  of  Devon- 
shire, "  My  lord,  I  know  that  I  can  save  this 
country,  and  that  no  one  else  can,"  if  he  hon- 
estly believed  what  he  said,  he  was  not  only  justi- 
fied in  seeking  office,  but  he  would  have  been  crim- 
inal if  he  had  not  sought  it.  For  it  is  right  to 
strive  even  for  a  high  place,  if  one  honestly  wants 
it,  not  for  the  prestige  that  it  brings,  but  for 
the  work,  the  service  that  it  makes  possible. 

Yes,  there  are  those  for  whom  it  is  right  at 
times  to  seek  high  office,  but  it  must  be  sought  in 
the  spirit  of  him  who  said,  "  Brethren,  I  count 
not  myself  to  have  apprehended,  but  I  follow 
after,  if  by  any  means  I  may  apprehend  that  for 
which  I  have  been  apprehended  of  Christ  Jesus." 
Or  in  the  spirit  of  Him  who  cried,  "  O  Jerusalem, 
Jerusalem,  thou  that  killcst  the  prophets,  and 
stonest  them  that  are  sent  unto  thee,  how  often 
would  I  have  gathered  thy  children,  as  a  hen 
gathereth  her  chickens  under  her  wings,  and  ye 
would  not."  If  that  be  egotism  or  self-seeking, 
make  the  most  of  it. 


THE  MEEK  63 

WAITING 

Serene,  I  fold  my  liands  and  wait 
Nor  care  for  wind,  or  tide,  or  sea; 

I  rave  no  more  'gainst  time  or  fate. 
For  lo !  my  own  shall  come  to  me. 

I  stay  my  haste,  I  make  delays, 
For  what  avails  this  eager  pace? 

I  stand  amid  the  eternal  ways, 

And  what  is  mine  sliall  know  my  face. 

Asleep,  awake,  by  night  or  day. 

The  friends  I  seek  are  seeking  me; 

No  wind  can  drive  my  bark  away. 
Nor  change  the  tide  of  destiny. 

What  matter  if  I  stand  alone.'' 

I  wait  with  joy  the  coming  years; 

My  heart  shall  reap  where  it  hath  sown, 
And  garner  up  its  fruit  of  tears. 

The  waters  know  their  own  and  draw 

The  brook  that  springs  in  yonder  height; 

So  flows  the  good  with  equal  law 
Unto  the  soul  of  pure  delight. 

The  stars  come  nightly  to  the  sky. 

The  tidal  wave  into  the  sea; 
Nor  time  nor  space,  nor  deep,  nor  high 

Can  keep  my  own  away  from  me. 

John  Burroughs. 


THEY  THAT  HUNGER  AND  THIRST 
AFTER  RIGHTEOUSNESS 

"  Blessed  are  they  that  hunger  and  thirst  after 
righteousness,  for  they  shall  be  filled."  With 
what  will  they  be  filled?  Why,  with  righteous- 
ness, the  thing  after  which  they  hunger  and 
thirst !  Goodness  itself  is  the  assured  and  only 
reward  of  goodness.  Heaven  and  Hell,  consid- 
ered as  reward  and  punishment,  are  immoral  in- 
ventions. 

Why  is  it  that  we  ever  do  wrong.?     In  the  last 

analysis,  is  it  not  because  we  really  do  not  wish 

to  do  right.''     Yet  we  often  hear  people  say  very 

earnestly,   "  I  do  want  to  do   right,  but  it  just 

seems  as  though  I  couldn't."     "  They  tell  us  that 

we  can  always  do  right  if  we  try  hard  enough," 

Mr.  Barrie  writes.     "  So  I  suppose  that  Tommy 

didn't  try  hard  enough,  but  only  God  knows  how 

hard  he  did  try."     And  as  we  look  into  our  own 

hearts,  we  must  admit  that  there  is  such  a  thing 

as  doing  wrong  when  in  a  sense  we  would  like  to 

do  right,  but  that  is  because  while,  up  to  a  certain 

point,  we  do  want  to   do   right,  we  want  to  do 

wrong  more.     For,  in  the  last  analysis,  we  always 

64 


THEY  THAT  HUNGER  65 

do  the  thing  that  we  want  most  to  do.  So  that 
if  we  really  want  to  do  right  more  than  we  want 
to  do  anything  else,  we  will  do  it. 

That  is,  if  we  truly  hunger  and  thirst  after 
righteousness,  as  the  starving  man  hungers  after 
bread,  and  as  the  thirsty  man  thirsts  after  water, 
we  will  surely  have  it.  But  we  must  remember 
that,  compared  with  his  desire  for  food,  the  hun- 
gry man  desires  nothing  else;  compared  with  his 
desire  for  drink,  the  thirsty  man  has  no  other  de- 
sire. And  the  spiritual  hunger  and  thirst  must 
be  just  as  intense  as  the  physical  hunger  and 
thirst.  Then,  and  then  only,  is  it  certain  of 
gratification.  "  If  with  all  your  hearts  ye  seek 
Me,  ye  shall  surely  find  Me." 

For  while  alas !  it  is  possible  to  hunger  after 
food  and  drink,  and  not  be  filled,  it  is  not  possible 
to  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness,  and  not 
be  filled.  And  just  as  food  and  drink  keep  the 
body  alive,  so  righteousness  keeps  the  soul  alive. 
For  the  soul  is  that  part  of  us  which  aspires  after, 
and  unites  us  with  the  Infinite  and  Eternal,  and 
only  through  righteousness  is  that  aspiration 
kept  alive,  that  union  maintained.  Thus  right- 
eousness is  the  food  of  the  soul,  without  which  the 
soul  cannot  live. 

And  yet  there  is  a  difficulty.  I  remember  poor 
George  III.,  who  did  seem  to  want  to  do  right, 
and  to  make  others  do  right,  (the  latter  of  course 
was  his  weakness),  and  yet  managed  to  do  more 
harm    than    his    two    predecessors    put    together, 


66  ULTIIMATE  IDEALS 

neitlicr  of  whom  cared  about  doing  right.  Must 
wc  conclude,  then,  that  while  he  who  hungers  and 
thirsts  after  righteousness,  will  surely  be  filled 
with  it,  in  so  far  as  he  understands  what  it  is, 
there  can  yet  be  no  assurance  that  his  under- 
standing will  be  guided  aright? 

The  truth  seems  to  be  that  it  is  quite  as  much 
our  duty  to  find  out  what  righteousness  is,  as  it  is 
to  do  it  after  we  have  found  out.  That  is,  the 
honest  effort  to  find  out  what  righteousness  is,  is 
a  part  of  righteousness,  perhaps  the  most  impor- 
tant part,  certainly  the  most  difficult  part.  It  is 
quite  as  much  our  duty  to  serve  the  Lord  our 
God  with  all  our  minds,  as  it  is  to  serve  Him  with 
all  our  strength.  Serving  Him  with  all  the  mind 
means  self-development;  serving  Him  with  all  the 
strength  means  self-control.  On  the  whole  the 
former  is  more  important  than  the  latter,  for 
while  self-control  is  only  a  means,  self-develop- 
ment is  an  end,  the  end  for  which  w^e  were  created. 
God  created  us  that  we  should  fulfil  ourselves,  not 
that  we  should  restrain  ourselves.  As  the  sin 
against  the  Spirit  is  to  doubt  the  Spirit,  so  the 
sin  against  life  is  to  deny  life.  Restraint  can 
only  be  tolerated  as  a  tempoi-ary,  partial  means 
toward  fulfillment.  But  when  perfect  fulfillment 
is  reached,  that  which  is  perfect  is  come,  "  law, 
life,  joy,  impulse  are  one  thing." 

We  sometimes  Avish  that  there  were  a  Voice 
from  Heaven  to  tell  us  just  what  the  right  thing 
was.     We  would  be  willing  to  do  it  if  only  we 


THEY  THAT  HUNGER  67 

knew  what  it  was !  But  if  such  a  Voice  could 
come,  we  would  be  deprived  of  the  opportunity  to 
serve  the  Lord  our  God  with  all  our  minds,  that 
is,  of  our  chance  of  self-development,  our  chance 
of  becoming  ourselves,  which  is  only  another  way 
of  saying  our  chance  of  becoming  one  with  the 
Father.  The  child  does  not  become  one  with  his 
father  through  obeying  commands  that  he  does 
not  understand,  but  by  understanding  his  father's 
nature,  and  his  father's  wishes  so  well,  that  com- 
mands are  unnecessary.  So  it  is  only  as  we  are 
able  to  find  out  the  will  of  God  without  being  told, 
that  we  can  really  become  one  with  Him,  think  His 
thoughts,  understand  His  nature,  hear  His  voice, 
not  as  something  outside  of  us,  but  as  something 
within  us.  "  This  is  life  eternal,  to  know  Thee, 
the  only  true  God."  But  we  can  never  know  Him 
through  just  being  told  about  Him,  He  must 
speak  within  us. 

"  Blessed  art  thou,  Simon  bar-Jonah,  for  flesh 
and  blood  hath  not  revealed  it  unto  Thee,  but  my 
Father  which  is  in  Heaven."  And  the  Father 
spoke  not  to  Him,  but  within  Him.  When  the 
union  of  two  spirits  is  complete,  there  is  no  need 
of  speaking  to  each  other.  "  In  that  day  ye  shall 
ask  me  nothing,"  and  I  will  tell  you  nothing. 
There  is  no  need  of  asking  or  telling,  for  I  am 
you  and  you  are  I,  we  are  made  perfect  in  one. 
In  so  far  as  I  understand  my  friend,  I  am  one 
with  my  friend.  In  so  far  as  I  understand  God, 
I  am  one  with  God. 


68  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

It  is  this  sense  of  oneness  with  the  Father  that 
distinguishes  Jesus  from  all  the  prophets  that 
came  before  Him.  The  Old  Testament  prophets 
thought  of  Jehovah  as  something  outside  of  them- 
selves, guiding  and  directing  them.  Jesus,  on  the 
other  hand,  thought  of  the  Father  as  one  with 
Himself,  "  I  and  the  Father  are  one."  He  had 
no  need  of  any  one  to  testify  to  Him  of  man,  for 
He  Himself  knew  what  was  in  man.  And  so  He 
had  no  need  of  any  one  to  testify  to  Him  of  God, 
for  He  Himself  knew  what  was  in  God.  God  was 
in  Him,  and  He  was  in  God.  And  His  prayer  for 
His  disciples  was  that  they  should  be  united  with, 
identified  with  the  Father,  even  as  He  was.  "  No 
man  knoweth  the  Father,  save  the  Son."  That 
is,  to  know  God,  we  must  become  sons  of  God. 
Only  by  the  God  within  us  can  we  know  the  God 
above  us. 

To  the  superficial  reader,  it  may  be  rather 
shocking  to  find  Oscar  Wilde  writing,  "  I  don't 
care  whether  I  am  a  better  man  or  not,  provided 
only  I  am  a  deeper  man."  But  what  is  it  to  be 
a  deeper  man?  Is  it  not  to  understand  man  bet- 
ter, and  to  understand  God  better  .-^  And  can  one 
be  a  deeper  man  without  being  a  better  man.'' 
We  are  told  that  David  was  a  man  after  God's 
own  heart.  What  can  this  mean  save  that  he  was 
a  deep  man,  a  man  who  had  learned  to  understand 
man,  a  man  who  had  learned  to  understand  God.'' 
And  he  had  learned  this  largely  through  his  mis- 
takes. 


THEY  THAT  HUNGER  69 

Oscar  Wilde  tells  us  that  morality  had  no  in- 
terest for  him.  After  all,  there  is  a  sense  in 
which  it  had  no  interest  for  Jesus,  the  morality 
that  consists  in  outward  forms.  For  forms  teach 
nothing,  it  is  only  inner  experiences  that  teach. 
"  It  is  the  Spirit  that  quickeneth,  the  letter  profit- 
eth  nothing." 

The  truth  is  that  the  Divine  government  is  not, 
as  frequently  represented,  an  absolute  monarchy, 
or  a  benevolent  despotism;  it  is  a  democracy. 
And  the  superiority  of  democracy  to  paternalism 
does  not  consist  in  the  fact  that  the  laws  are  bet- 
ter, they  frequently  are  not.  Indeed,  if  we  con- 
sider any  one  generation,  it  is  often  possible  to 
find  that  hotter  things  are  done,  better  conditions 
created,  under  paternalism  than  under  democracy. 
The  advantage  which  a  successful  democracy  has 
over  a  successful  despotism  is,  not  that  it  makes 
better  laws,  or  even  better  outward  actions,  but 
that  it  makes  better  developed  people.  For 
through  making  their  laws,  that  is  through  for- 
mulating their  ideals,  the  people  make  themselves. 
So  God  allows  us  to  make  our  own  laws,  that  is 
to  find  out  His  laws,  for  ourselves,  even  at  the 
risk  of  making  great  mistakes.  For  the  object  of 
the  Divine  government  is  not  to  make  laws,  but 
to  make  men.  And  our  failures,  quite  as  much  as 
our  successes,  help  us  to  be  men. 

When  I  was  a  young  girl  I  had  to  make  an 
important  decision.  After  I  had  made  it,  I  had 
reason  to  think  that  my  father  disapproved  of  it, 


70  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

but  when  I  questioned  him  on  the  subject,  he  re- 
plied, *'  Well,  it  is  better  that  you  should  decide 
for  yourself,  than  that  I  should  decide  for  you. 
Even  if  you  are  making  a  mistake,  it  is  better 
that  you  should  make  a  mistake  for  yourself,  than 
that  I  should  make  it  for  you.'*  Yes,  the  mis- 
takes which  we  make  for  ourselves,  especially 
when  we  have  honestly  tried  to  find  the  right 
course,  are  developing,  while  the  mistakes  which 
others  make  for  us,  are  too  often  only  embitter- 
ing. But  not  only  are  the  honest  mistakes  which 
we  make  for  ourselves  more  developing  than  the 
mistakes  which  others  make  for  us,  but  they  often 
bring  us  nearer  to  God,  than  even  the  wise  deci- 
sions made  for  us  by  others. 

For  we  are  here,  not  even  to  find  righteousness, 
we  are  here  to  find  ourselves.  We  find  ourselves 
through  finding  righteousness,  but  only  through 
finding  it  ourselves,  not  through  having  it  found 
for  us.  Indeed,  in  the  last  analysis,  unrighteous- 
ness would  seem  to  be  nothing  save  unwillingness 
to  think,  wilful  inability  to  think  straight,  a  re- 
fusal to  use  our  reason,  in  reliance  upon  the 
Power  that  has  given  us  that  reason. 

But  while  democracy  is  the  highest  ideal  of 
government,  it  is  of  course  an  adventure,  and  a 
dangerous  adventure.  Yet,  dangerous  as  it  is,  it 
is  nothing  like  so  dangerous  as  the  adoption  of  a 
rule-of-thumb  morality,  adopting  it  not  only  for 
one's  self,  but  attempting  to  force  it  upon  others. 
That  is  not  only  the  most  dangerous,  but  the  most 


THEY  THAT  HUNGER  71 

sinful  thing  that  it  is  possible  to  do.  For  it  is 
both  to  lose  one's  own  soul,  through  stifling  all 
chance  for  its  development,  and  to  endanger  the 
souls  of  others.  "  Quench  not  the  Spirit,"  the 
principle  of  growth  within  you.  And  the  Puri- 
tan is  in  fully  as  much  danger  of  quenching  the 
Spirit  as  is  the  libertine. 

Much  has  been  written  about  the  dangers  aris- 
ing from  an  excessive  or  perverted  emotional  na- 
ture. But  what  about  the  danger  of  an  excessive 
or  perverted  will.-^  the  will  that,  as  in  the  case 
of  poor  George  III.,  is  used  to  close  both  the  mind 
and  the  heart,  to  stifle  the  voice  within  us  that  is 
trying  to  say,  "  Speak,  Lord,  for  thy  servant 
heareth." 

The  truth  is  that  we  are  too  apt  to  mistake 
hungering  and  thirsting  after  our  own  way,  try- 
ing to  impose  our  own  will  upon  others,  for  hun- 
gering and  thirsting  after  righteousness.  What 
passes  for  a  strong  will  is  often  mere  obstinacy, 
wilfulness  rather  than  will.  And  wilfulness  diff'ers 
from  will,  in  that  there  is  no  mind  behind  it,  it  is 
will  that  is  not  able  to  justify  itself. 

In  one  of  his  books,  Professor  Sumner  of  Yale 
carries  his  well-known  delight  of  putting  truth  in 
the  form  of  paradox,  to  the  extent  of  asserting 
that,  of  all  dangerous  citizens,  quite  the  most  dan- 
gerous is  the  man  of  principle.  Now  there  is 
nothing  of  which  we  are  prouder  than  of  having 
principles,  and  of  sticking  to  them  through  thick 
and  thin,  regardless  of  consequences.     Professor 


72  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

Sumner,  however,  contended  that  these  so-called 
principles  are  dangerous,  because  too  often  they 
degenerate  into  iron  rules  of  conduct,  that  take 
no  account  of  changing  conditions,  because  based 
on  the  idea  that  right  and  wrong  are  absolute, 
not  relative. 

For  there  is  only  one  righteousness  which  is 
absolute,  and  that  is  of  the  spirit,  and  not  of  the 
letter;  it  consists  in  loving  the  Lord  our  God  with 
all  our  heart,  with  all  our  soul,  with  all  our  mind, 
and  with  all  our  strength,  and  our  neighbor  as 
ourselves.  Perfect  love  for  God,  perfect  love  for 
the  neighbor,  perfect,  that  is  enlightened  love  for 
the  self,  is  the  only  real  righteousness,  the  only 
righteousness  that  does  not  deprive  us  of  the  indi- 
viduality and  the  sympathy  that  we  were  put  here 
to  develop.  Any  righteousness  that  is  developed 
at  the  expense  of  initiative  and  tenderness  is  sheer 
loss. 

The  form  of  expression  that  the  love  that  is 
righteousness  should  take,  is  left  to  our  God- 
given  reason  to  determine.  Certainly  it  does  not 
express  itself  by  blindly  follow^ing  a  line  of  con- 
duct fixed  years  ago,  before  the  conditions  of  the 
present  age  could  possibly  be  knoAvn.  For  not 
only  is  true  love  never  blind,  it  never  sees  with 
other  people's  eyes. 

No!  God  does  not  supply  us  with  rules  of 
righteousness.  He  is  a  source  of  righteousness. 
Like  the  lute-player  in  the  "  Bard  of  the  Dimbo- 
Vitza." 


THEY  THAT  HUNGER  73 

"If  thou  art  thirsty  He  will  ne'er 
Give  thee  a  drink,  but  show  thee  where 
His  well  doth  stand." 

Moreover,  conventional  righteousness  cannot  be 
the  real  righteousness,  for  if  it  were,  it  could  be 
fully  attained,  and  growth  would  stop.  The  soul 
would  have  no  chance  to  build  more  lofty  cham- 
bers as  the  old  decay.  We  are  to  be  filled  with 
righteousness,  but  that  means  that  we  are  to  be 
filled  now,  up  to  the  limits  of  our  present  capacity, 
filled  and  satisfied  for  now,  but  not  filled  or  sat- 
isfied for  all  time.  For  to  be  filled  permanently, 
to  have  satisfied  one's  desire  for  all  time,  to  have 
attained  one's  final  end,  is  not  Heaven,  but  Hell. 
In  his  "  Child  of  the  Dawn,"  Mr.  Benson  makes 
Hell  the  land  of  satisfied  desire.  And  the  land  of 
permanently  satisfied  desire,  even  when  that  desire 
is  for  righteousness,  is  indeed  Hell.  "  Wherefore, 
that  that  which  is  should  be  perfect  is  not  allot- 
ted, for  if  it  is  lacking  in  naught,  then  it  is  lack- 
ing in  all  things." 

Nevertheless,  "  Ye  shall  be  perfect,  even  as 
your  Father  which  is  in  Heaven  is  perfect."  But 
our  Father  in  Heaven  is  for  each  of  us  his  own 
highest  ideal,  and  the  highest  ideal  of  today  is  sup- 
planted by  the  still  higher  ideal  of  tomorrow. 
The  music  that  one  loves  the  best  is  that  which 
speaks  to  the  soul  of  something  far  off  and  un- 
attainable. And  to  each  poet  the  song  that  he 
never  wrote  is  the  dearest  song. 

But  while  we  are  not  to   accept  conventional 


74  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

standards  because  they  are  conventional,  neither 
are  we  to  reject  them  on  that  account.  I  once 
knew  two  little  girls  whose  mother  had  set  them 
on  a  long  summer  afternoon  to  do  some  examples 
in  division  of  fractions.  The  younger  child  set  to 
work  at  once,  and  finislied  them  before  the  other, 
who  was  fretting  away  nervously,  had  even  made 
a  beginning.  The  child  whose  task  was  com- 
pleted exclaimed  impatiently,  "  Mildred,  why 
don't  you  hurry  up  and  do  your  examples,  so  that 
you  can  come  out  and  play?"  "Because,"  was 
the  reply,  "  I  don't  understand  them."  "  Why," 
retorted  the  other,  "  it  is  perfectly  simple.  Just 
turn  the  divisors  upside  down,  and  multiply  nu- 
merators and  denominators  together."  "  Oh,  I 
know  that,"  answered  the  first,  "  and  could  have 
done  it  as  quickly  as  you  did,  but  I  didn't  under- 
stand why  that  is  dividing,  and  I  won't  do  one 
thing  until  I  understand  why."  "  Oh,"  said  the 
little  sister,  "  it  is  dividing  because  the  book  says 
so,  and  because  mother  says  so."  "  Helen 
Brown,"  was  the  indignant  and  superior  reply, 
"  if  you  are  going  to  believe  everything  just  be- 
cause books  say  so,  and  mother  says  so,  I  pity 
you." 

And,  indeed,  there  was  ground  for  pity.  Nev- 
ertheless the  little  sister  might  have  retorted  with 
equal  force,  "  Mildred  Brown,  if  you  are  going  to 
disbelieve  everything  just  because  books  say  so, 
and  because  mother  says  so,  I  pity  you." 

For  the  experience  of  the  ages  is  not  to  be  de- 


THEY  THAT  HUNGER  75 

spised;  it  must  count  for  something,  must  indeed 
count  for  a  great  deal.  Every  student  of  history 
or  of  sociology  knows  that  there  is  or  was  a  real 
reason  behind  almost  every  convention,  that  to 
obey  conventions  is  often  simply  to  let  the  great 
social  conscience  make  short-cut  decisions  for  us. 
So  we  are  neither  to  accept  nor  to  reject  con- 
ventions simply  because  they  are  conventions,  we 
are  to  prove  all  things,  to  hold  fast  that  which  is 
good.  It  is  possible  that  in  our  search  after 
righteousness,  we  may,  as  Mr.  Chesterton  says, 
sail  all  around  the  globe  only  to  find  England 
again,  but  the  England  that  we  have  discovered 
for  ourselves  is  different  from  the  England  that 
we  have  accepted  from  others.  Accepted  plati- 
tudes are  deadening,  realized  platitudes  are  life- 
giving. 

"  Think  not  that  I  am  come  to  destroy  the  law 
and  the  prophets.  I  am  come  not  to  destroy,  but 
to  fulfil !  "  Nevertheless,  "  except  your  righteous- 
ness exceed  the  righteousness  of  the  scribes  and 
Pharisees,"  the  people  who  appear  to  care  most 
about  the  law  and  the  prophets,  "  ye  shall  in  no 
wise  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  Heaven !  "  But 
how  is  our  righteousness  to  exceed  the  righteous- 
ness of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees.''  By  its  inward- 
ness !  Instead  of  paying  so  much  attention  to  the 
outward  actions,  attend  first  to  the  inner  thought 
and  emotions.  "  God  is  a  Spirit,  and  they  who 
worship  Him  must  worship  Him  in  spirit  and  in 
truth !  "     "  My  son,  give  me  thy  heart." 


76  ULTIIMATE  IDEALS 

It  is  also  to  be  noticed  that  the  righteousness 
after  wliich  we  hunger  and  thirst  cannot  be  nega- 
tive righteousness.  For  we  cannot  hunger  and 
thirst  after  a  negative  good.  We  do  not  hunger 
and  thirst  not  to  have  ])oison,  we  hunger  and 
thirst  to  have  food  and  drink.  And  just  as  it  is 
impossible  to  hunger  and  thirst  after  negative 
righteousness,  so  it  is  ini])ossible  to  be  filled  with 
it.  Negations  are  not  filling.  Our  religion  must 
be  an  inspiring,  not  a  repressive  force.  We  do 
want  to  get  rid  of  vice,  but  only  as  a  means 
toward  an  end,  that  is,  that  the  room  which  it 
occupies  may  be  filled  with  virtue.  For  when  the 
unclean  spirit  had  gone  out  of  the  man,  it  was 
only  that  it  might  take  to  it  seven  other  spirits 
worse  than  himself,  and  return  again  to  the  house 
that  it  found  swept,  garnished  and  empty. 

So  we  must  take  care  not  to  free  ourselves  from 
the  vices  of  the  body  only  to  make  room  for  the 
much  more  contemptible  vices  of  the  mind:  pride, 
contempt,  avarice  and  hypocrisy.  For  we  may 
be  sure  that  any  righteousness  that  does  not  in- 
crease our  love  for  our  fellowmen  is  not  righteous- 
ness, and  will  land  us  not  in  Heaven,  but  in  Hell. 
From  its  etjnnology  Hell  is  simply  that  which 
separates  us,  to  be  helled  is  to  be  shut  off  from. 
And  he  who  has  built  a  wall  around  himself  so  as 
to  separate  himself  from  his  fellowmen  is  in  hell, 
even  though  the  Avail  be  a  wall  of  righteousness. 
There  can  be  no  loving  the  Lord  our  God  with  all 
our  heart  that  does  not  include  the  love  of  the 


THEY  THAT  HUNGER  77 

neighbor.  To  love  God  in  such  a  way  as  sepa- 
rates us  from,  makes  us  despise  the  neighbor,  is 
really  not  to  love,  but  to  hate  God. 

And  of  course  to  hunger  and  thirst  after  right- 
eousness is  not  to  abstain  from  evil,  because  one  is 
afraid  of  its  consequences.  If  I  abstain  from 
being  a  drunkard,  it  should  not  be  chiefly  because 
I  am  afraid  of  the  havoc  of  body  and  mind  which 
drunkenness  produces,  the  loss  of  social  consid- 
eration and  so  forth,  but  because  I  am  eagerly 
desirous  of  some  positive  development,  some  active 
service  with  which  drunkenness  would  interfere. 
We  cast  sin  away,  not  so  much  because  we  see  the 
ugliness  of  sin,  as  because  we  see  the  beauty  of 
holiness.  Virtue  must  not  be  confounded  with 
respectability. 

Neither  is  it  possible  to  take  any  credit  to  our- 
selves when  we  practice  the  negative  virtues  for 
the  sake  of  getting  on,  rather  than  for  the  sake  of 
rendering  efficient  service.  We  cannot  serve  God 
and  mammon ;  neither  can  we  make  our  service  of 
God  a  means  of  serving  mammon. 

Moreover,  no  one  who  truly  hungers  and  thirsts 
after  righteousness  can  ever  be  made  sour  and  sad 
by  attaining  it.  Food  makes  the  hungry  man 
glad,  water  rejoices  the  heart  of  the  thirsty  man. 
So  there  is  no  one  who  really  hungers  and  thirsts 
after  righteousness,  who  does  not  shout  for  joy 
when  he  obtains  it.  The  sanction  of  righteous- 
ness is  happiness.  For  righteousness  is  the  food 
of  the  soul,  not  its  medicine.     Moreover  when  we 


78  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

really  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness,  all 
sense  of  duty  vanishes.  He  who  hungers  and 
thirsts  after  righteousness  no  more  does  right 
from  a  sense  of  duty,  than  he  who  hungers  and 
thirsts  after  food  and  drink  eats  and  drinks  from 
a  sense  of  duty. 

And  true  righteousness  does  not  deprive  us  of 
an  interest  in  life,  for  true  righteousness,  true 
saintliness,  unites  us  with,  rather  than  separates 
us  from,  our  fellows. 

"  Love  not  the  world,  neither  the  things  that 
are  in  the  world ! "  Yet  "  God  so  loved  the 
world."  And  I  think  that  He  loved  not  only  the 
people  that  are  in  the  world,  but  all  the  beautiful 
things  that  arc  in  the  world,  whether  they  are 
man-made  or  God-made.  "  My  country  right  or 
wrong ;  if  right,  to  keep  it  right ;  if  wrong,  to 
make  it  right."  So  we  may  also  say,  "  This 
world  of  God's,  right  or  wrong;  if  right,  to  keep 
it  right ;  if  wrong,  to  set  it  right." 

What  is  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter.'' 
It  is  this :  If  we  really  and  truly  try  with  all  our 
hearts  to  find  out  what  the  good  and  perfect  will 
of  God  is,  we  are  sure  to  find  out  as  much  as  God 
means  us  to  find  out  for  the  present.  "  If  with  all 
your  hearts  ye  seek  Me,  ye  shall  surely  find  Me." 

If  we  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness,  we 
are  sure  to  be  filled  with  what  for  us  is  righteous- 
ness, even  though  that  righteousness  be  relative, 
and  not  absolute.  For  to  live  up  to  our  own 
judgment  and  our  own  principles,  having  done  all 


THEY  THAT  HUNGER  79 

that  we  could  to  make  that  judgment  and  those 
principles  high,  is  subjective,  if  not  objective 
righteousness.  And  if,  when  we  have  really  used 
the  best  judgment  that  has  been  given  to  us,  we 
still  make  mistakes,  we  must  conclude  that  God 
means  us  to  make  mistakes,  that  He  means  to  use 
even  our  mistakes  to  work  out  some  higher  pur- 
pose, some  higher  righteousness.  So  even  in  our 
mistakes,  we  have  attained  the  righteousness  that, 
at  this  stage.  He  meant  us  to  attain.  When 
Browning's  Pope,  exercising  his  best  judgment, 
condemns  Guido,  he  says 

"  If  some  acuter  wit,  fresh-probing,  sound 
His  multifarious  mass  of  words  and  deeds 
Deeper,  and  reach  through  guilt  to  innocence, 
I  shall  face  Guide's  soul,  nor  blench  a  jot. 

"  God,  who  set  me  to  judge  thee,  meted  out 
So  much  of  judging  faculty,  no  more! 
Ask  Him  if  I  was  slack  in  use  thereof !  " 

For  the  error  that  is  not  our  fault  we  are  not 
responsible.  God  means  us  sometimes  to  find  our 
way  through  error  to  truth.  The  truth  that  can 
be  seen  at  once  is  generally  superficial  truth,  or 
at  best,  objective  truth,  not  subjective  truth. 
For  it  is  something  outside,  and  not  inside  of  us. 
Truth,  to  be  truth  for  us,  must,  like  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  be  within  us.  "  If  with  all  your  hearts 
ye  seek  Me,  ye  shall  surely  find  Me,"  and  when  that 
which  is  perfect  is  come,  we  shall  find  that  even 
the  mistakes  were  steps  on  the  way  to  finding  Him. 


VI 
THE  MERCIFUL 

Who  is  the  merciful  person?  Is  he  the  person 
who  denies  sin?  If  so,  man's  mercy  must  be  very 
different  from  God's  mercy,  for  God  never  denies 
sin.  God  recognizes,  more  than  man  does,  the  ex- 
ceeding sinfulness  of  sin.  No,  the  merciful  man 
is  he  who,  like  God,  does  not  deny  sin,  but  who, 
also  like  God,  understands  it,  understands  sin  and 
understands  the  sinner.  I  sometimes  think  that 
God  can  hardly  be  said  to  forgive  us  at  all.  He 
just  understands  us.  And  when  we  really  under- 
stand, there  is  no  room  for  forgiveness ;  love,  sym- 
pathy and  help  take  its  place. 

That  is  why  we  are  never  ashamed  to  confess 
our  sins  to  God,  for  God  is  not  only  the  spirit 
of  love,  but  also  the  spirit  of  wisdom  and  under- 
standing, the  spirit  of  love  because  He  is  the 
spirit  of  wisdom  and  understanding.  We  do  not 
love  because  we  do  not  understand,  or  it  may  be 
we  do  not  understand  because  we  do  not  love. 
But  God  is  the  Spirit  that  understands  all,  not 
only  what  we  do  and  say,  but  also  the  inmost 
thoughts  of  our  hearts,  just  what  the  temptation 
to  which  we  have  succumbed  was  to  us,  all  our 

80 


THE  MERCIFUL  81 

inherited  tendencies,  all  the  temptations  that  come 
to  us  from  environment.  He  knows  too  the  lim- 
ited vision  that  has  been  granted  to  each  of  us, 
knows  therefore  that  of  all  sinners  it  might  be 
said,  as  Jesus  said  of  those  who  did  Him  to  death, 
"  They  know  not  what  they  do." 

He  understands  too  that  while  it  is  possible 
that  in  the  best  action  of  the  best  man,  there  is  a 
seed  of  evil  which,  if  allowed  to  develop,  would  be 
sufficient  to  damn,  it  is  certain  that  in  the  worst 
actions  of  the  worst  man,  there  is  a  seed  of  good 
which,  if  allowed  to  develop,  would  be  sufficient  to 
save.  And  He  has  no  need  to  judge  after  the 
sight  of  His  eyes,  or  to  reprove  after  the  hearing 
of  His  ears,  for  He  is  able  to  see  more  than  eyes 
can  see,  to  hear  more  than  ears  can  hear.  He 
needeth  not  that  any  one  should  testify  to  Him 
of  man,  for  He  Himself  knows  what  is  in  Man. 

It  is  because  we  feel  that  men  do  not  under- 
stand us  that  we  cry  out  for  a  God  who  does. 
We  are  never  quite  happy  in  the  presence  of  one 
who  loves  us,  but  from  whom  we  are  keeping  some- 
thing back.  We  feel  that  his  love  depends  upon 
our  keeping  it  back.  The  real  friend  is  the 
friend  who  understands  us  fully,  and  who  loves 
us  just  the  same.  But  is  there  any  such  friend? 
Is  it  not  because  there  is  no  such  friend  that  we 
are  obliged  to  believe  in  God?  We  read  that  of 
old  Moses  talked  face  to  face  with  God  as  a  man 
talketh  with  his  friend.  But  nowadays  I  believe 
we  are  sometimes   tempted  to  cry  out,   "  Would 


82  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

that  there  were  a  friend  with  whom  we  could  talk 
face  to  face,  as  a  man  talketh  with  his  God !  " 

I  have  just  been  reading  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells' 
"  Research  Magnificent."  In  it  I  find  a  charac- 
ter, Prothero,  who  does  talk  to  his  friend  Benham, 
as  intimately  as  a  man  talks  to  God.  But  in  real 
life  we  rarely  lay  our  hearts  bare  to  our  friends. 
There  is  always  something  that  we  keep  back. 
We  are  afraid  either  that  the  friend  would  be 
bored,  or  that  he  would  not  understand,  and  there- 
fore would  be  shocked.  But  whenever  we  feel 
that  we  are  really  thinking  ourselves  or  anything 
else  down  to  the  bottom,  we  have  a  feeling  that  we 
are  talking  to  God,  the  great  Spirit  of  the  Uni- 
verse, who  includes  all,  and  therefore  understands 
and  loves  all. 

"  Sir,"  said  the  Samaritan  woman,  "  I  perceive 
that  thou  art  a  prophet."  And  when  Jesus  pro- 
ceeds to  show  her  that  He  knows  all  about  her  sin- 
ful and  sorrowful  past,  she  does  not  seem  to  be  at 
all  ashamed,  for  in  the  presence  of  the  true 
prophet,  we  may  be  sorry,  but  we  are  not 
ashamed.  "  Come  see  a  man  who  told  me  all 
things  that  ever  I  did.  Is  not  this  the  Christ.'*  " 
What  would  the  Christ,  the  Messiah,  be  to  each 
of  us,  save  a  man  who  could  tell  us,  and  to  whom 
we  could  tell,  all  things  that  ever  we  did,  and  not 
be  ashamed? 

So  I  could  fancy  no  praise  that  would  seem 
quite  so  great  to  me,  as  for  one  to  say  to  me,  tliat 
he  would  never  be  ashamed  to  tell  me  anything. 


THE  MERCIFUL  83 

For  it  would  mean  that  I  was  becoming  like  God, 
in  that  I  was  able  to  see  beneath  the  surface, 
that  I  was  developing  the  spiritual  eye,  the  spir- 
itual ear,  to  serve  as  interpreter  of  impressions 
made  upon  the  physical  eye,  the  physical  ear.  I 
have  a  friend  who,  when  she  is  summing  up  the 
character  of  another,  feels  that  she  has  bestowed 
her  highest  praise,  when  she  says  "  She  is  not 
easily  shocked."  And  if  the  not  being  easily 
shocked  does  not  imply  an  absence  of  ideals,  but 
rather  a  knowledge  of,  an  understanding  of  human 
nature,  an  ability  to  see  not  only  the  deed  but  also 
the  soul  of  the  doer,  then  surely  it  is  a  quality  de- 
serving of  praise.  God  is  never  shocked,  for  He 
understands  all. 

I  once  heard  it  said  of  a  very  sweet  young  girl, 
"  It  is  easy  for  her  to  be  so  uniformly  sweet,  for 
she  has  nothing  of  the  reformer  in  her  nature." 
But  that  is  not  the  kind  of  sweetness  that  we 
want,  not  the  sweetness  that  is  blind  to  sin,  but 
the  sweetness  that  sees  sin  clearly,  and  stays  sweet 
just  the  same;  the  sweetness  which  understands, 
and  knows  that  if  there  be  condemnation,  it  should 
not  be  so  much  for  the  individual  as  for  the  whole 
order  of  society,  that  has  made  such  sin  possible. 
It  may  be  permitted  to  Pippa  to  sing  "  All's  right 
with  the  world,"  but  Pippa  was  only  a  child. 
Browning,  the  author  of  "  Fifine,"  the  creator  of 
Guido  and  his  brothers,  certainly  never  meant  to 
teach  tliat  all  was  right  with  the  world  in  the 
child's  sense.     Indeed,  as  we  read  his  poems,  there 


84  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

are  times  when  we  are  more  inclined  to  say,  "  All's 
wrong  with  the  world.  Who  will  show  us  any 
good?"  But  it  is  true  that  deep  beneath  the 
wrong,  Browning  did  find  all  right  with  the  world. 
As  a  friend  of  mine  said  of  a  popular  play,  "  Its 
lesson  seems  to  be  that  while  at  present  all  is 
wrong  with  the  world,  there  is  beneath  all  that 
is  wrong  something  that  is  right,  and  that  will  in 
the  end  make  everything  right."  That  is  life's 
lesson. 

"  He  that  is  spiritual  judgeth  all  things,"  but 
"  Judge  not  according  to  appearances,  but  judge 
righteous  judgment."  The  mercy  of  the  man  who 
is  ignorant  of  sin,  or  who  wilfully  denies  its  exist- 
ence, is  not  real  mercy.  It  is  only  because  Brown- 
ing, like  his  own  David,  had  gone  the  whole  round 
of  creation,  that  his  final  judgment  of  human 
nature  is  worth  anything.  That  judgment  is  to 
be  found  in  the  last  lines  which  came  from  his  pen, 
in  which  he  describes  himself  as 

"  One  who  never  turned  his  back,  but  marched  breast 
forward, 
Never  doubted  clouds  would  break. 
Never   dreamed    though   right   were   worsted,   wrong 

would  triumph. 
Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better, 
Sleep  to  wake." 

We  are  sometimes  told  that  we  must  not  be 
too  critical.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  it  is 
impossible  to  be  too  critical,  if  only  we  can  be 
critical    in    the    right    spirit.     The    criticism    or 


THE  MERCIFUL  85 

analysis  of  others  can  never  hurt  the  soul  that  is 
conscious  of  its  own  weakness.  For  it  is  not  criti- 
cism, but  complacency  that  is  the  enemy  of  spir- 
itual growth.  We  must  not  indulge  in  it,  not  so 
much  because  it  hurts  others,  as  because  it  hurts 
ourselves.  It  did  not  hurt  the  publican  that  the 
Pharisee  prayed  within  himself,  "  Lord,  I  thank 
thee  that  I  am  not  as  other  men  are,  unjust,  adul- 
terers, extortioners,  or  even  as  this  publican,"  but 
it  did  hurt  the  Pharisee. 

There  are  only  two  sins  that  Jesus  condemned 
unsparingly,  hypocrisy  and  avarice.  And  the 
hypocrisy  which  he  condemned  did  not  consist  in 
pretending  to  others  that  one  was  better  than  one 
was.  It  was  the  much  more  hopeless  sin  of  be- 
lieving one's  self  that  one  was  better  than  one 
was.  And  the  sinner  was  almost  always  a  correct 
person,  a  devotee  of  formal  righteousness. 

Of  course  the  difficulty  here,  as  elsewhere  in  life, 
is  that  if  we  escape  Scylla,  we  are  in  danger  of 
falling  into  Charybdis.  Just  as  it  is  always 
harder  for  the  tolerant  person  to  tolerate  intoler- 
ance than  to  tolerate  any  other  sin,  so  it  is  harder 
for  the  merciful  person  to  extend  mercy  to  this 
unmerciful  righteousness,  this  spiritual  security, 
than  to  any  other  sin.  And  are  we  really  called 
upon  to  do  so?  I  said  the  other  day  that  I  de- 
spised a  snob,  and  was  told  that  it  was  never  right 
to  despise  any  one.  And  in  truth  I  believe  that' 
it  is  not  in  my  nature  permanently  to  despise  any 
one.     But  in  setting  up  standards,  in  combating 


86  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

sins  that  are  not  generally  recognized  as  sins, 
fierce  waves  of  contempt  such  as  swept  over  Jesus 
Himself,  when  He  pronounced  His  woes  upon  the 
self-satisfied  people  of  His  own  day,  do  seem  to 
me  to  be  justifiable.  There  is  no  need  to  despise 
the  type  of  person  Avho  is  guilty  of  physical  sin, 
such  sin  is  clearly  recognized  as  sin.  Moreover  it 
brings  its  own  penalty.  But  it  is  the  mission  of 
this  age,  as  it  was  the  mission  of  Jesus'  own  age, 
to  put  snobbishness,  hard  superiority,  in  its 
proper  place.  And  its  proper  place  is  at  the 
very  head  of  the  category  of  possible  sins. 

Yet  in  judging  the  modem  Pharisee,  we  must 
remember  that  even  for  his  sin,  society  is  more  to 
blame  than  is  the  individual.  For  the  erring  in- 
dividual has  probably  been  brought  up  to  be  a 
self-righteous  snob.  Society  which,  through  its 
bad  tenement  houses,  exposes  the  poor  and  the 
low-born  to  physical  temptations,  through  its 
false  standards  exposes  the  well-to-do  and  the 
well-born  to  this  more  subtle  temptation.  Thus, 
in  the  last  analysis,  even  here  it  is  society  rather 
than  the  individual  Avho  is  to  be  condemned,  the 
sin  rather  than  the  sinner. 

So  I  think  that  we  can  be  sure  that  while,  when 
we  really  understand,  there  will  still  be  some  sins 
that  we  will  continue  to  condemn  unsparingly, 
there  will  be  no  sinner  whom  we  shall  so  condemn. 
But  there  can  be  no  real  understanding  that  is  of 
the  head  alone,  the  heart  must  play  its  part. 
"  The   prophets,"    says   Matthew   Arnold,   "  ear- 


THE  MERCIFUL  87 

nestly  reminded  their  nation  of  the  superiority  of 
justice  and  judgment  to  any  exterior  ceremony 
like  sacrifice.  But  judgment  and  justice  them- 
selves, as  Israel  in  general  conceived  them,  have 
something  exterior  in  them ;  now  what  was  wanted 
was  more  inwardness,  more  feeling.  This  was 
given  by  adding  mercy  and  humbleness  to  judg- 
ment and  justice.  Mercy  and  humbleness  are  al- 
ways something  inward,  they  are  affections  of  the 
heart."  In  one  sense  mercy  is  only  justice  — 
that  is,  it  is  head  justice  and  heart  justice,  not 
just  external  justice. 

Head  justice  and  heart  justice,  that  is  what  we 
want,  the  seeing  eye,  the  understanding  heart, 
justice  that  understands,  justice  that  loves,  for 
that  is  the  only  justice  that  is  justice!  In  judg- 
ing our  fellowmen  we  must  not  leave  our  intellects 
behind  us.  Justice  that  is  merely  of  the  heart  is 
not  justice,  but  wishy-washy  sentimentality.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  justice  that  is  of  the  head  alone 
is  never  real  justice,  for  the  head  alone  never 
understood  a  single  human  being,  or  a  single  im- 
portant human  interest.  We  must  use  both  head 
and  heart  to  evolve  our  ideals  of  right  and  wrong, 
we  must  use  both  head  and  heart  to  understand 
our  fellowmen  who  may  sin  against  these  ideals. 

Understanding,  of  course,  does  not  always  mean 
approving,  nor  does  it  necessarily  mean  that  even 
when  people  do  approve  of  each  other,  that  they 
can  always  work  together.  An  acquaintance  of 
mine  told  me  that  when  he  was  traveling  in  China 


88  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

he  heard  of  two  missionaries  who  would  have  noth- 
ing to  do  with  each  other.  His  informant  seemed 
to  think  that  this  proved  conclusively  that  neither 
was  a  real  Christian.  His  own  impression  was 
that  the  two  men  did  not  understand  each  other ; 
if  only  they  could  be  brought  to  do  this,  he  felt 
that  there  should  be  no  difficulty  about  their 
working  together.  But  when  he  came  to  know 
them,  he  discovered  that  tlierc  was  no  lack  of  un- 
derstanding, and  even  of  respect,  and  yet  each  was 
convinced  that  the  other's  mode  of  work  was 
wrong,  that  the  other,  although  a  good  man,  was 
mistaken.  Hence  of  course  there  could  be  no 
working  together.  Probably  it  was  even  better 
that  they  should  not  meet  often,  but  there  was  no 
lack  of  mercy. 

And  then  of  course  sometimes  we  may  recognize 
the  fact  that  a  man's  way  of  working  and  living 
is  right  for  him,  but  it  is  not  our  way.  Hence 
although  we  may  approve  of  him,  we  cannot  work 
or  live  together.  But  the  important  thing  is  that 
a  man  should  cast  out  devils,  not  that  he  should 
follow  with  us. 

Yes,  when  we  really  understand  our  fellowmen, 
it  is  impossible  for  us  not  to  be  merciful.  But 
how  shall  we  attain  unto  this  understanding.''  We 
attain  unto  it  in  great  measure,  at  least,  by  under- 
standing ourselves.  Know  thyself,  not  only  be- 
cause in  order  to  develop  the  best  self  and  to 
subdue  the  worst  self,  it  is  necessary  to  know 
the   self,   but   also  because   it   is   through  know- 


THE  MERCIFUL  89 

ing    ourselves    that    we    come    to    know    others. 

For  every  man  is  included  in  every  other  man. 
Hence  the  way  to  understand  another  is  to  put 
ourselves  in  his  place,  to  look  into  our  own  hearts, 
and  to  find  in  them  the  seed  of  evil  which,  under 
different  circumstances,  might  have  developed  into 
the  same  outward  action  which  we  are  condemn- 
ing in  another.  Yes,  and  to  look  back  over  our 
own  lives,  and  to  see,  alas !  that  there  have  been 
times  in  which  seeds  of  evil  not  only  might,  but  did 
develop  into  actions  quite  as  bad  as  those  which 
we  are  now  condemning.  And  thus  seeing  clearly 
the  beam  in  our  own  eye,  we  will  be  able  to  esti- 
mate more  fairly  the  mote  that  is  in  our  brother's 
eye.  And  as  we  know  that  even  with  the  beam  in 
our  own  eye,  we  have  never  been  all  bad,  so  we 
can  be  sure  that,  in  spite  of  the  mote  that  is  in  his 
eye,  our  brother,  too,  has  his  good  qualities. 

"  Know  thine  own  soul,"  not  so  much  for  the 
sake  of  knowing  thine  owti  soul,  not  as  an  end  in 
itself,  but  for  the  sake  of  realizing  the  sameness, 
the  unity,  the  brotherhood  of  all  men.  That  is 
the  reason  that  to  the  Greek  the  words  "  Know 
thyself  "  comprehended  all  virtue.  For  the  pur- 
pose of  life  is  that  we  may  see,  that  the  mind  may 
see,  that  the  heart  may  see,  that  both  heart  and 
mind  may  be  open  to  receive  light  and  love.  So 
we  must  keep  the  mind  and  the  heart  open  that  we 
may  understand  ourselves,  that  we  may  under- 
stand other  people. 

What  is  the  great  mission  of  literature  save  to 


90  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

combat  prejudice?  to  broaden  and  deepen  the 
heart  by  making  it  sec  what  lies  beneath  the  sur- 
face? But  no  poet,  no  novelist  ever  wrote  any- 
thing worth  writing,  save  as  he  wrote  out  of  his 
own  heart;  hence  the  necessity  of  knowing  one's 
own  heart.  And  I  think  that  there  is  a  sense  in 
which  the  really  great  novelist  loves  all  his  char- 
acters, and  makes  us  love  them  all,  because  he 
understands  them  all,  and  makes  us  understand 
them  all.  To  understand  is  to  love,  to  love  is  to 
understand.  ]\Ien  speak  of  "  the  gentle  Shake- 
speare." But  why  was  he  the  gentle  Shake- 
speare? Because  he  understood  all  varieties  of 
the  human  heart  and  mind,  as  no  other  of  the  sons 
of  men  has  understood  them,  and  loved  because  he 
understood.  This  is  true  greatness.  "  Thy  gen- 
tleness hath  made  thee  great,"  but  also  "  Thy 
greatness  hath  made  thee  gentle." 

It  follows  as  a  matter  of  course  that  the  merci- 
ful are  blessed  or  happy,  for  the  mere  being  merci- 
ful makes  them  happy.  "  The  merciful  man  doeth 
good  unto  his  own  soul."  Nothing  makes  us  so 
unhappy  as  harsh  and  bitter  judgments  of  oth- 
ers. The  bitter  person  must  always  be  the  un- 
happy person.  But  the  truly  merciful  man  is 
not  only  he  who  has  no  harshness  or  bitterness, 
but  he  who,  through  a  clear  understanding,  has 
come  to  see  that  there  is  no  room  for,  no  excuse 
for  harshness  or  bitterness,  for  he  has  come  to 
realize  not  only  that  there  is  always  good  beneath 
the  evil,  but  also  that  even  the  evil  itself  is  good 


THE  MERCIFUL  91 

in  the  making.  So  even  evil  only  serves  to  kindle 
the  flame  of  his  love.  He  cannot  help  being  an 
optimist,  not  an  unreasoning,  but  a  reasoning  op- 
timist, and  the  reasoning  optimist  must  always  be 
happy. 

And  then,  as  I  have  said  so  many  times  in  the 
course  of  this  book,  the  only  thing  that  can  bring 
real,  lasting  happiness,  is  the  feeling  that  we  are 
moving  onward  in  the  direction  of  full  develop- 
ment. What  is  God's  mercy  to  us,  save  the  inner 
peace  that  comes  to  us  as  we  grow  into  more  per- 
fect harmony  with  man  and  God?  And  what  is 
human  perfection  save  perfect  relations  with  man 
and  God?  And  we  are  only  merciful  in  the  deep 
sense  of  the  word  as  we  come  into  closer,  more 
perfect  relations  with  both  man  and  God,  through 
coming  into  a  fuller  understanding  of  man  who 
sins,  and  of  God  who  forgives  sin,  and  so  forgive 
as  God  forgives.  We  pray  "  Forgive  us  our  tres- 
passes as  we  forgive  those  who  trespass  against 
us."  Should  we  not  also  pray,  "  Help  us  to  for- 
give those  who  trespass,  whether  against  us  or 
against  any  one  else,  even  those  who  trespass 
against  themselves,  as  Thou  forgivest  us,  because 
we  understand  them  as  Thou  understandest 
us  and  them  "? 

We  sometimes  say,  "  I  can't  care  for  so  and  so, 
because  I  see  through  him  too  well."  The  real 
truth  is  that  we  do  not  care  for  him,  because  we  do 
not  see  through  him  enough.  A  little  insight,  like 
a   little   knowledge,   is    a  dangerous    thing.     But 


92  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

when  we  see  through  people  as  God  sees  through 
them,  we  will  love  everybody,  even  as  God  loves 
everybody.  The  true  sage  is  he  who,  seeing  deep- 
est, loves  most. 

The  reward  of  the  merciful  is  the  opening  of 
the  eyes,  the  happiness  of  seeing  that,  as  the  dying 
Luria  says,  all  men  do  tend  to  become  good  crea- 
tures, even  though  it  be  so  slow.  As  our  hearts 
enlarge  to  their  proper  size,  we  come  to  see  that  as 
in  Christ  Jesus,  there  can  be  neither  Jew  nor 
Greek,  bond  nor  free,  so  in  us  there  can  be  no 
such  thing. 

And  we  are  to  carry  mercy  so  far  as  to  love  our 
enemies.  To  be  able  to  do  that  is  the  greatest 
reward,  the  highest  happiness  of  all.  For  if  love 
is  the  greatest  bliss  that  the  human  heart  can  at- 
tain unto,  surely  the  greatest  bliss  of  all,  the  joy 
that  transcends  joy,  is  to  carry  love  so  far  as  to 
extend  it  to  an  enemy.  "  If  ye  love  them  that 
love  you,  what  thank  have  ye?  "  No,  the  great 
reward  is  when  we  love  those  that  do  not  love  us, 
and  this  reward  is  love  itself. 

Is  it  not  significant  that  hard  upon  the  com- 
mand to  love  our  enemies,  come  the  words  "  Be  ye 
therefore  perfect,  even  as  your  Father  which  is  in 
Heaven  is  perfect".-^  But  what  is  it  to  be  made 
perfect?  To  be  made  through  and  through. 
And  we  are  made  through  and  through  only  as  we 
are  filled  through  and  through  with  love.  We 
can  only  be  made  perfect,  as  we  are  made  perfect 
in  one, —  that  is,  as  we  become  one  with  God,  and 


THE  MERCIFUL  93 

one  with  our  fellowmen.  "  Love  is  the  fulfillment 
of  the  law,"  and  when  love  extends  even  to  the 
enemy,  then  and  then  only  is  the  law  perfectly  ful- 
filled. 

And  it  makes  no  difference  whether  we  read  this 
verse  as  a  command,  or,  as  in  the  Revised  Version, 
as  a  promise. 


VII 

THE  PEACEMAKERS 

"  Blessed  are  the  peacemakers,  for  they  shall  be 
called  the  children  of  God." 

Who  are  the  peacemakers?  Are  they  just  the 
people  who  patch  up  quarrels?  If  so,  not  many 
of  us  have  the  opportunity  to  earn  this  blessing, 
for  there  are  few  of  us  to  whose  lot  it  ever  falls 
to  perform  this  service.  Moreover,  when  all  is 
said  and  done,  peace  is  not  the  absence  of  quarrel- 
ing; comparatively  few  of  us  quarrel,  and  yet 
comparatively  few  of  us  have  real  peace.  In  the 
last  analysis,  peace  consists  not  so  much  in  our 
relations  to  each  other,  as  in  our  relations  to  our- 
selves and  to  God,  That  is,  to  the  general  order 
of  the  universe,  which  is  God's  expression  of  Him- 
self. Peace,  like  the  kingdom  of  Heaven,  is  within 
us !  And  peacemakers  are  not  so  much  those  who 
patch  up  quarrels,  as  those  who  diffuse  an  atmos- 
phere of  peace,  those  who  like  Jesus  say,  or  rather 
have  no  need  to  say,  whenever  they  come  into  a 
company,  "  Peace  be  unto  you,"  and  when  they 
leave,  "  My  peace  I  leave  with  you." 

What  is  this  peace?     Ruskin,  at  the  beginning 

of  his  "  Pra?terita,"  says,  "  For  best  and  truest  of 

all  blessings,  I  had  been  taught  the  perfect  mean- 

94 


THE  PEACEMAKERS  95 

ing  of  Peace  in  thought  and  word.  I  never  had 
heard  mj  father's  or  my  mother's  voice  once 
raised  in  any  question  with  each  other ;  nor  seen 
an  angry  or  even  a  slightly  hurt  or  offended 
glance,  in  the  eye  of  either.  I  had  never  heard 
a  servant  scolded ;  nor  even  suddenly,  passion- 
ately, or  in  any  severe  manner  blamed.  I  had 
never  seen  a  moment's  trouble  or  disorder  in  any 
household  matter,  nor  anything  whatever  done  in 
a  hurry,  or  undone  in  due  time.  I  had  no  con- 
ception of  such  a  thing  as  anxiety.  ...  I  had 
never  done  any  wrong  that  I  knew  of,  beyond  oc- 
casionally delaying  the  commitment  to  heart  of 
some  improving  sentence,  that  I  might  watch  a 
wasp  on  the  window  pane,  or  a  bird  in  the 
cherry  tree ;  and  I  had  never  seen  any  grief." 

Is  this  peace?  Is  it  not  rather  the  negation 
of  life.''  And  negation,  resignation,  is  not  peace, 
He  who  said,  "  Peace  I  leave  with  you,  my  peace  I 
give  unto  you  "  was  also  He  who  said  "  I  am  come 
that  they  might  have  life,  and  that  they  might 
have  it  more  abundantly."  No,  it  is  not  less  life, 
but  more  life  that  we  want.  Peace  is  not  nega- 
tive. Real  peace  can  nowhere  be  found  save  in 
life,  and  life  means  love  and  suffering.  And  while 
it  is  sometimes  important  that  we  should  relax 
emotionally^,  it  is  far  more  important  that  we  shall 
have  strong  emotional  natures  to  relax. 

Ruskin  tells  us  that  the  general  tenor  of  his 
education  was  too  formal.  Was  not  this  peace 
of  his  childhood  also  too  formal?     He  not  only 


96  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

had  no  grief,  he  tells  us  that  at  this  time  he  had 
nothing  to  love.  But  how  can  there  be  peace 
without  grief  and  without  love?  No!  if  we  are 
to  have  peace  Me  must  have  the  full  peace,  that 
comes  to  those  who  see  life  steadily,  and  see  it 
whole,  not  the  empty  peace  that  comes  to  those 
who  have  no  sorrows  of  their  own,  and  whose  eyes 
arc  blinded  to  the  world's  sorrows.  If  we  are  to 
have  freedom  from  anxiety,  it  must  not  be  the 
freedom  that  those  have  who  have  never  had  any- 
thing to  be  anxious  about,  or  that  they  have 
who  are  too  stupid  to  be  anxious,  but  the  peace 
that  comes  to  those  who  have  their  share  of  nat- 
ural anxieties,  and  are  sufficiently  clear-sighted  to 
see  through  them,  to  feel  the  peace  that  is  under- 
neath them. 

For  real  peace  comes  only  to  one  who,  like 
Jesus,  has  been  a  man  of  sorrows,  and  acquainted 
with  grief.  Peace  in  the  midst  of  agony,  the  calm 
wisdom  gained  by  suffering  of  the  Greeks,  the 
crown  of  thorns  transformed  into  a  crown  of 
glory  of  the  Christian,  this  only  is  true  peace. 
He  only  knows  peace,  who  has  come  out  of  great 
tribulation,  and  has  made  his  will  one  with  the 
Divine  will.  Peace  can  only  be  obtained  as  the 
creature  becomes  one  with  the  Creator. 

"  The  rishis,"  says  Tagore,  "  were  they  who 
having  reached  the  supreme  God  from  all  sides  had 
found  abiding  peace,  had  become  united  with  all, 
had   entered  into   the  life   of  the   universe."     In 


THE  PEACEMAKERS  97 

such  union  with  the  Creator  man  becomes  perfect, 
made  perfect  through  joy,  made  perfect  through 
suffering.  He  who  has  attained  this  peace  is 
more  even  than  a  child  of  God,  he  is  one  with  God. 
"  I  and  the  Father  are  one,  we  will  be  one  with 
you,  3'e  shall  be  one  with  us."  The  purpose  of 
creation  is  completed,  for  what  is  that  purpose 
save  that  the  creature  shall  become  one  with  the 
Creator,  thinking  His  thoughts,  understanding 
His  laws,  doing  His  will.''  For  such  a  man  suffer- 
ing has  ended,  he  has  passed  "  under  the  ultimate 
angels'  law  "  where 

"  Law,   Life,   Joy,  Impulse  are  one  thing." 

But  this  is  a  never-ending  process,  and  the 
strongest  argument  for  Eternity  is  that  it  is  so 
short  a  time  to  understand  the  Eternal,  to  become 
one  with  God. 

Those  of  us  who  have  ever  suffered  from,  or 
been  with  one  who  has  suffered  from  melancholia, 
and  recovered,  know  what  this  means.  It  some- 
times seems  as  though  nothing  could  shake  them 
again.  For  they  have  been  to 'the  bottom  of  all 
things,  into  the  very  depths  of  hell,  and  there 
they  have  found  God,  and  found  themselves.  "  If 
I  descend  into  hell,  lo,  thou  art  there,"  and  so 
there  is  no  hell.  Hell  has  become  simply  the  way 
to  heaven,  the  fiery  path  by  which  we  ascend  into 
the  presence  of  God.  Henceforth  although  the 
waves  may  be  mountain  high,  we  know  that  at  the 


98  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

bottom  there  will  always  be  peace.  There  is  no 
longer  any  fear  of  the  future,  for  the  soul  knows 
its  own  strength. 

"  The    P'uture   I    may    face,   now   I    liave  proved  the 
Past." 

Is  not  this  the  message  of  the  book  of  Job, 
the  book  which  Carlyle  has  so  well  called  "  Every 
Man's  Book  ".?  Great  suffering  comes  to  a  right- 
eous man,  and  through  that  suffering  his  right- 
eousness, nay  more,  he  himself  ceases  to  be  for- 
mal and  becomes  real,  for  through  it  he  obtains 
a  vision  of  God,  the  great  Reality.  His  three 
friends  come  to  him  with  the  sorry  comfort  that 
his  sufferings  are  the  punishment  of  his  sins,  re- 
pentance is  what  he  needs.  Elihu  comes  nearer 
the  truth  when  he  asserts  that  suffering  is  disci- 
pline, the  TTadrjfJLaTa  of  life  are  fiadrjixara.  But  the 
real  solution  comes  when  God  Himself  answers 
Job  out  of  the  whirlwind,  giving  no  intellectual 
solution  of  the  problem  of  suffering,  but  creating 
in  him  such  a  full  sense  of  His  presence,  that  no 
further  solution  is  necessary.  That  is  what  suf- 
fering is  for,  to  bring  us  into  the  presence  of  God. 
Then  the  heart  and  mind  of  man  are  satisfied. 
"  I  have  heard  of  Thee  with  the  hearing  of  the  ear, 
but  now  mine  e^'^e  seeth  Thee." 

What  is  it  to  see  God.'*  Is  it  not  to  see,  realize 
and  be  satisfied  with  the  fact  that  we  are  at  the 
same  time  everything  and  nothing?  In  ourselves 
nothing,  as  a  part  of  God  everything!     And  to 


THE  PEACEMAKERS  99 

this  vision  of  God  we  only  come  through  suffer- 
ing nobly  borne.  This  is  affliction's  meaning,  this 
is  its  compensation ! 

But  the  Vision  which  is  Peace  does  not  come  to 
us  through  renunciation.  Indeed,  so  long  as  re- 
nunciation is  conscious,  we  should  be  ashamed  of 
it,  not  proud  of  it.  "  In  the  last  analysis,"  said 
the  most  unselfish  person  that  I  know,  "  I  always 
do  the  things  that  I  like  best  to  do."  "  Lo,  I 
come  to  do  Thy  will,  O  God,"  because  Thy  will  is 
my  will.  "  I  do  always  the  things  that  please 
Him  "  because  the  things  that  please  Him  are  the 
things  that  please  Me.  "  To  obey  is  better  than 
sacrifice,"  but  not  much  better,  because  after  all 
obedience  has  in  it  something  of  the  nature  of 
sacrifice.  Glad  co-operation  is  better  than  either, 
"  Henceforth  I  call  you  not  servants,  but 
friends." 

For  being  one  with  the  Father  means  not  just 
simply  submitting  to  the  will  of  the  Father,  but 
actively  doing  it  up  to  the  best  light  that  we  have. 
We  must  not  be  resigned  to  the  will  of  God,  we 
must  actively  work  for  it,  we  must  do  our  best  to 
bring  it  about.  For  we  do  not  want  the  peace  that 
is  a  mere  mental  and  moral  chloroform,  stifling 
ambition,  deadening  hope.  To  abandon  interest 
in  life  is  not  peace.  Human  nature  demands  inter- 
est more  than  it  demands  anything  else,  and  with- 
out the  thing  that  we  demand  most,  there  can  be 
no  peace.     The  negation  of  ambition  is  not  peace. 

"  I  have  learned  in  whatsoever  state  I  am  there- 


100  ULTIINIATE  IDEALS 

with  to  be  content,"  but  content  with  it  as  a 
stage,  discontented  with  it  as  a  finality.  For 
peace  can  be  found  only  in  growth;  it  lies  not  in 
resignation,  but  in  hope.  It  comes  only  to  those 
who  have  a  definite  plan  for  their  lives,  a  definite 
object  for  which  they  are  working  up  to  the  limit 
of  their  ability.  It  lies  not  in  quiescence,  but  in 
stinigglc;  we  find  rest  only  in  effort.  Bafl^ed  in 
trying  to  attain  one  object,  we  must  go  on  to  an- 
other; when  one  door  is  closed  to  us,  we  must  find 
another  that  is  open.  We  "  fall  to  rise,  are 
baffled  to  fight  better,  sleep  to  wake." 

Of  course  there  must  be  a  certain  kind  not  of 
resignation,  but  of  acceptance.  We  must  accept 
our  own  limitations,  accept  ourselves  as  we  are. 
We  must  not  say,  "  If  I  were  different,  I  could  do 
differently,"  but  we  must  find  out  what  we  are, 
accept  ourselves  for  what  we  are.  We  must  ac- 
cept even  the  limitations  that  we  have  imposed 
upon  ourselves,  the  limitations  of  mind  and  body 
caused  by  our  mistakes  and  sins.  Instead  of 
wasting  our  strength  in  remorse,  trying  to  repair 
the  irreparable,  we  must  accept  what  is  left,  do 
the  best  that  we  can  with  what  we  still  have.  Nor 
must  we  accept  ourselves  as  less  than  we  are,  we 
must  respect  ourselves,  for  in  the  absence  of  self- 
respect  there  can  be  no  peace.  Moreover,  he  who 
despises  himself  soon  becomes  despicable. 

And  we  must  sometimes  accept  the  hardest 
thing  of  all  to  accept,  the  misunderstanding  of 
friends.     Thus  only  can  we  enter  into  the  fellow- 


THE  PEACEMAKERS  101 

ship  of  His  sufferings.  For  it  was  not  the  ac- 
cursed death  of  the  cross  that  made  Him  the  Man 
of  Sorrows,  and  acquainted  with  grief.  It  was 
the  fact  that  not  even  His  brethren  believed  on 
Him,  that  "  He  came  unto  His  own,  and  they  that 
were  His  own,  received  Him  not." 

And  we  must,  of  course,  accept  sorrow  and  suf- 
fering, sorrow  and  suffering  that  seem  to  us  un- 
necessary, not  only  for  ourselves,  but  for  the 
world.  Yet  most  of  this,  I  think,  we  are  to  ac- 
cept only  as  a  stage,  only  until  we  can  find  out 
how  to  avoid  it.  For  instance,  it  is  the  conven- 
tional thing  to  say  that  it  is  God's  will  when  a 
friend  or  comrade  is  stricken  by  death,  and  thence 
to  draw  comfort.  But  I  cannot  be  brought  to 
the  place  where  I  can  believe  that  it  is  God's  will, 
that  a  man  or  a  woman  should  be  cut  off  in  the 
height  of  power  and  service.  My  comfort  is  that 
it  is  not  God's  will,  and  that  the  time  is  coming 
when  men  shall  so  discover  and  live  by  God's  laws 
that  an  early  death  cannot  occur,  and  then,  and 
not  now,  God's  will  will  be  done. 

If  we  ask  why  we  were  not  told  the  laws  of  God 
from  the  beginning,  why  so  many  centuries  of 
waste  must  be  lived  through  in  the  process  of  find- 
ing them  out,  the  answer  is  that  in  that  case  there 
would  be  no  opportunity  to  serve  God  with  all  the 
mind;  that  is,  that  all  opportunity  of  intellectual 
and  spiritual  growth  would  be  denied  us.  For 
while  obedience  may  be  moral,  it  is  certainly  not 
spiritual.     There  is  no  spiritual  growth  even  in 


102  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

the  acceptance  of  the  experience  of  others ;  it  is 
only  as  we  find  out  things  for  ourselves  that  the 
spirit  grows.  Therefore,  it  is  that  the  work  of 
man's  life  is  quite  as  much  to  discover  the  laws  of 
God,  as  it  is  to  obey  them.  God  establishes  His 
laws,  inviolable  and  beneficial,  gives  to  man  the 
power  to  discover  them,  and  then  leaves  him  free 
even  to  ignorance  and  sin  and  suffering. 

"  Henceforth  I  call  you  not  servants,  but 
friends.'*  To  serve  God  with  the  mind  is  to  be- 
come the  friend  of  God,  for  what  is  the  friend 
save  the  one  who  understands  us,  who  enters  into 
our  plans  and  our  purposes  .'*  "  Ye  are  they  who 
have  continued  with  me  in  my  temptations." 
That  is  much,  but  they  who  are  with  us  in  our 
plans  and  ambitions,  are  even  more.  Men's  dear- 
est friends  are  commonly  their  fellow-workers,  it 
is  permitted  to  us  to  be  workers  together  with 
God.  For  God  cannot  fulfil  Himself,  cannot 
carry  out  His  own  laws,  except  as  we  understand 
Him.  If  the  greatest  suffering  of  man  is  to  be 
misunderstood,  so  to  Him  also !  Speaking  after 
the  manner  of  men,  let  us  learn  His  laws,  that  we 
may  put  an  end  to  His  suffering !  "  The  whole 
creation  groaneth  and  travaileth  together  in 
pain  "  until  the  creature  understands  the  Creator. 
Till  then,  both  creature  and  Creator  must  suffer. 
For  we  are  not  only  here  to  fill  out  that  which  is 
lacking  in  the  sufferings  of  Christ,  we  are  here  to 
fill  out  that  which  is  lacking  in  the  wisdom  of  God. 

If  only  we  could  be  sure  of  the  Future !     Then 


THE  PEACEMAKERS  103 

it  seems  as  though  we  could  bear  anything.  But 
we  must  be  content,  not  resigned,  not  to  know  all 
about  the  Future  now,  though  always  working  to 
find  out  more.  For  if  we  knew  all  about  the  life 
that  is  to  be,  the  life  that  now  is  might  be  only 
one  of  waiting.  How  much  time  is  wasted  in  wait- 
ing for  trains,  for  meals,  for  mails !  So  we  might 
waste  the  whole  life  in  waiting.  And  the  attitude 
of  waiting  is  not  an  attitude  of  growth. 

For  we  were  made  to  live  mainly  in  the  Present, 
—  not  too  much  in  either  the  past  or  the  future. 
To  live  in  the  past  is  to  stand  still  or  to  go  back- 
ward, to  live  in  the  future  in  the  sense  of  merely 
waiting  for  the  future,  is  to  cut  off  the  possibility 
of  having  a  future.  It  is  legitimate  to  live  in  the 
past  only  as  its  joys  and  its  sorrows,  its  victories 
and  its  defeats,  shed  light  upon  the  present.  The 
life  of  yesterday  is  useful  only  as  it  contributes 
strength,  sweetness  and  light  to  the  life  of  to-day. 
And  it  is  legitimate  to  live  in  the  future  only  as 
we  are  making  the  future  out  of  the  present,  not 
as  we  are  worrying  about  it,  or  waiting  for  it. 
And  just  as  we  make  the  future  of  this  life  out  of 
the  present,  so  it  is  probable  that  we  make  the 
life  that  is  beyond  out  of  the  life  that  now  is. 

"  The  higher  life  we  cannot  miss. 
By  truly,  nobly  living  this." 

I  have  a  dear  friend  who,  in  the  ninety  years 
that  have  been  allotted  her,  has  done  much  to 
make  this  world  a  better  place  in  which  to  live. 


104  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

An  old  gentleman,  a  contemporary  whose  life  has 
been  spent  in  fighting  the  same  battles  that  she 
has  fought,  once  said  to  her,  "  And  now  my  friend 
and  I  feel  that  our  work  is  done,  and  we  have 
nothing  to  do  but  wait  for  the  angels  to  call  us 
home."  To  which  the  old  lady  replied  in  a  spir- 
ited way,  "  You  may  wait  for  the  angels  if  you 
want  to,  I  shall  be  ready  for  them  when  they  come, 
but  I  have  too  much  to  do  to  wait  for  them." 
And  for  myself,  I  can  only  hope  that  old  age  will 
find  me  so  full  of  interest  in  life  that  I  shall  have 
no  time  to  wait  for  the  angels.  For  then  as  the 
outward  man  decays,  the  inward  man  will  be  re- 
newed day  by  day.  Moreover  when  the  inward 
man  is  constantly  being  renewed,  it  generally  takes 
the  outward  man  a  long  time  to  decay. 

Yes,  it  is  in  work  that  we  find  life  and  peace. 
That  is  the  reason  that  no  honest  work  is  ever  a 
failure.  "  I  have  no  more  made  my  Book,"  says 
Montaigne,  "  than  my  Book  has  made  me."  That 
is  the  chief  use  of  work,  not  what  we  accomplish 
outside  of  us,  but  what  we  accomplish  inside  of  us. 
The  world  could  get  on  very  well  without  my  w^ork, 
but  I  could  not  get  on  well  without  it. 

True,  "  they  also  serve  who  only  stand  and 
wait."  But  only  Avhen  such  standing  and  waiting 
is  imperative.  And  when  we  are  actually  phys- 
ically or  mentally  incapacitated  for  work,  I  do  not 
think  that  the  suffering  is  great.  It  is  only  the 
unnecessary  rest  that  produces  restlessness.  It  is 
when  one  feels  in  one's  self  the  capacity  to  work, 


THE  PEACEMAKERS  105 

and  yet  for  some  reason,  generally  some  misunder- 
standing, or  some  social  convention,  is  cut  off  from 
exercising  it,  that  the  suffering  is  greatest  of  all. 

Think  of  the  maiden  aunts  of  the  past  genera- 
tion who  sat  by  the  fireside  of  a  sister  or  a  brother ! 
In  many  cases  no  one  wanted  them  to  be  there, 
and  they  did  not  want  to  be  there,  but  there  was 
no  other  place  for  them  to  be.  Some  of  these 
women  had  been  in  their  youth  quite  as  attractive 
as  their  married  sisters,  quite  as  able  as  their  suc- 
cessful brothers,  but  the  chances  of  life  had  de- 
nied them  the  lot  of  their  sisters,  social  conven- 
tions had  denied  them  the  career  of  their  brothers. 
So  with  no  outlet  for  either  emotional  nature  or 
ability,  they  became  a  burden  to  themselves  and  to 
everybody  else. 

This  is  the  greatest  suffering  that  I  can  con- 
ceive of.  Compared  with  such  women,  St.  Paul 
did  not  know  the  alphabet  of  suffering!  Well 
might  he  speak  of  his  afflictions  as  light  and  but 
for  a  moment !  For  if  he  was  "  in  prisons  more 
abundantly,  and  in  stripes  above  measure,"  he 
was  also  in  labors  more  abundantly,  in  labors 
above  measure!  He  was  working  up  to  the  very 
highest  point  of  his  ability,  for  a  cause  that  he 
was  sure  was  worth  while !  And  he  had  the 
glorious  fellowship  of  the  Apostles !  Therefore, 
of  course,  the  perils  of  divers,  the  perils  of  rob- 
bers, the  perils  from  his  countrymen,  the  perils 
from  the  Gentiles,  were  to  him  as  nothing.  But 
the   old   maid's   tragedy,   now  happily  becoming 


106  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

a  thing  of  the  past,  was  lack  of  work,  lack  of 
fellowship.  Generations  of  old  maids  had  to  groan 
and  travail  together  in  pain,  waiting  to  come  into 
the  heritage  of  this  generation.  God  grant  that 
these  sad  generations,  who  in  this  world  had  only 
evil  things  are  now  comforted.  Yes,  there  is  a 
sense  in  which  in  the  next  world  they  should  be  put 
even  above  the  best  of  mothers,  for  the  mothers 
had  some  of  their  good  things  in  this  life. 

For  in  such  cases  the  great  comfort  that  comes 
to  me  is  in  the  thought  of  the  justice  of  God. 
If  God  is  the  Creator,  He  owes  us  happiness. 
False  theologies  have  sometimes  told  us  that  He 
owes  us  nothing,  but  the  Father  owes  His  child 
everything.  And  God  is  far  more  responsible  for 
us  than  the  earthly  parent  is  for  his  child.  For 
the  earthly  parent  is  not  always  responsible  for  his 
child's  limitations,  but  in  the  last  analysis  the  Cre- 
ator is  always  responsible  for  our  limitations.  To 
say  that  God  is  not  bound  by  His  own  laws,  that 
what  is  justice  for  man  is  not  justice  for  God,  is 
to  me  too  much  like  the  Greek  and  Roman  ideal 
which  permitted  murder  and  adultery  to  their 
gods.  Worse,  for  these  sins  are  in  a  sense  pri- 
vate crimes,  affecting,  except  by  example,  only  a 
few  individuals.  Injustice  on  the  part  of  a  king  is 
worse  than  private  vice.  A  good  man  but  a  bad 
king  does  more  harm  than  a  bad  man  but  a 
good  king.  God  must  be  at  least  as  high  as  the 
highest  ideals  that  He  has  implanted  in  the  best 


THE  PEACEMAKERS  107 

men.  In  no  civilized  country  should  a  king  be 
solutus  a  legihus. 

The  twin  sister  of  work  is  prayer.  Work  and 
prayer  are  the  two  angels  that  comfort  us  and 
bring  us  peace.  Why  do  we  pray?  Our  Father 
knoweth  the  things  we  have  need  of  before  we  ask 
Him.  We  pray  then  not  so  much  that  we  may 
obtain  the  things  for  which  we  pray,  as  that  we 
may  be  renewed  and  strengthened  in  the  inner  man, 
that  fellowship  with  the  Infinite  may  protect  us 
from  the  agitation  and  embitterment  brought  on 
by  contact  with  the  finite. 

When  Jesus  prayed  I  do  not  believe  that  He 
was  asking  for  things  at  all.  He  was  just  resting 
Himself  upon  His  Father's  love,  feeling  that  His 
Father  was  there.  That  is  what  prayer  is,  feeling 
our  Father's  presence,  for  with  His  presence  comes 
His  peace,  the  peace  of  God  that  passeth  all  un- 
derstanding. We  are  taught  to  ask  for  things  in 
early  youth,  because  we  are  so  childish  that  we 
cannot  approach  the  Infinite  in  any  other  way,  but 
as  our  spirits  develop,  a  fuller,  better  communion 
becomes  possible.  Then  we  cease  to  ask  for  any- 
thing except  spiritual  blessings.  Prayer  consists 
in  so  uniting  ourselves  with  the  source  of  all 
strength  that  we  become  one  with  the  Infinite. 

But  not  only  does  this  kind  of  prayer 
strengthen  and  steady  the  inner  man,  it  renews  the 
ideal.  For  prayer  expressed  in  words  is  something 
like  saying  our  lessons.     The  child  says  his  les- 


108  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

sons,  not  for  the  teacher's  benefit,  but  that  he  may 
clarify  his  own  mind.  We  do  not  fully  know  or 
understand  a  thing  until  we  can  put  it  into  words. 
So  through  prayer  we  come  to  know  and  under- 
stand our  own  ideals,  clarify  and  strengthen  our 
own  notion  of  the  purpose  of  our  lives,  and  our  de- 
sire to  fulfil  it. 


VIII 
THE  PURE  IN  HEART 

"  BLESSED     ARE    THE    PURE    IN     HEART,     FOR    THEY 
SHALL  SEE  GOD  !  '* 

Herein  is  the  sum  of  the  whole  matter. 
"  Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart,  for  they  shall  see 
God!  "  Of  course  the  pure  in  heart  shall  see  God, 
for  who  are  the  pure  in  heart?  The  pure  in  heart 
are  they  who  do  see  God,  in  all  the  works,  and  all 
the  laws  of  Creation,  they  who  see  the  Creator  in 
everything  that  He  has  created,  they  who  never 
call  anything  that  God  has  cleansed  common  or  un- 
clean, they  who  never  make  anything  that  God  has 
cleansed  common  or  unclean. 

It  is  this  ability  to  he  pure  in  heart,  this  abUity 
to  see  God,  that  separates  man  from  the  lower  ani- 
mals. The  horse  and  the  dog  see  the  creation  — 
only  man  sees  the  Creator.  Man,  and  man  only, 
has  the  power  to  recognize  the  fact  that  his  body 
is  a  temple  of  the  living  God,  and  that  his  spirit  is 
a  breath  of  the  living  God.  The  Spirit  beareth 
witness  with  our  spirit  that  we  are  the  children  of 
God!  Only  man  is  capable  of  enthusiasm,  for 
only  man  has  been  breathed  into   by  the  living 

God! 

109 


110  ULTIMATE  IDEALS 

What  is  the  living  God?  Here  I  cannot  get  be- 
yond the  definition  that  I  learned  in  my  childhood. 
God  is  Love,  God  is  Light,  God  is  Spirit,  He  is  the 
Spirit  of  Wisdom  and  Understanding,  the  Spirit 
of  Counsel  and  Might,  the  Spirit  of  Knowledge, 
and  the  Fear  of  the  Lord!  And  this  Spirit  the 
pure  in  heart  always  see,  for  in  It  tliey  live  and 
move  and  have  their  Being! 


Date  Due 

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QC  18*a& 

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